Applying 10.2.0.4 Patch 42 (January 2011)

Release 10.2.0.4 for Microsoft Windows (32-Bit)
You should administer one Oracle product, one Oracle home at a time, for its particular Bundle Patch Update. Each Oracle home will have its own requirements. We are updating Oracle Database as below.

Upgrading from 10.2.0.1 to 10.2.0.4 (Win)

Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.4) Patch Set 3 for Microsoft Windows (32-Bit) 

Identify the Oracle Database Installation
This is not a complete software distribution. You must install it in an existing Oracle Database 10g Oracle home. To identify Oracle home directories, view the/etc/oratab file.

Alt+Ctrl+Del on Remote Desktop

In order to send Ctrl-Alt-Del keystrokes to remote computer connected via Remote Desktop client, just press the following workaround
Ctrl+Alt+End

Using and Disabling the Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR) with Oracle Net for 11g

Trace Files Viewing Method 
C:\Users\inam>adrci
ADRCI: Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on Tue Jan 25 13:56:20 2011
Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.
No ADR base is set

Alter system kill session and ORA-00031: session marked for kill

Today we face a problem on our development database.
problem is :- One of user's sesssion is killed by "alter system kill session" but that session was being a huge DML operation with the wait "HS Message sent to agent".

Export did not include some table in dump file

Today a .NET developer took a dump for a schema and noticed that a table was not included in the exported file. I observed that table was newly created and was not used at all before exporting. So I just inserted a row in the table save it and then delete and save. After this this table was exported as others.

WUT-121 upon downloading file from AS

Today one of the developer complained that he is getting WUT-121 as below while trying to download a file from the Application Server.

PING with Timestamp

We were getting ORA-3113 errors for some web clients and after investigations, I found that this is due the many network dropouts on all Oracle related servers. I just ran the simple pingtest as below

Setting the Default Connect String

If you want to avoid putting the connect string every time on your local client you can do the following
-- in unix
export TWO_TASK=HOMEDEV
-- in windows: set LOCAL key to mydb value in the registry or:
SET LOCAL=HOMEDEV  -- your db connect string

SQLNet Logging/Tracing

Net Logging and Trace
Oracle Net logging and trace are configured in the sqlnet.ora typically found at ORACLE_HOME\network\admin

Deny Access to DB for Specific IPs

We can configure the sqlnet.ora file to allow and deny access to the database via the validnode checking parmeters.

Password protected listener

Listener Intro:

The Oracle Database Listener is the database server software component that manages the network traffic between the Oracle Database and the client. The Oracle Database Listener listens on a specific network port (default 1521) and forwards network connections to the Database.

Troubleshooting Guide for the CMAN in 10g

These are the most common problems you face when using a 10g CMAN:

1) TNS-04012 when starting CMAN

Using Connection Manager

Oracle Connection Manager is a proxy server, an intermediate server that forwards connection requests to database servers or to other proxy servers. It has two primary functions:

Database Creation 10g Win - non ASM

The following will help you to create the database (non-ASM) on Windows environment

1- Create parameter file, all parameters are self explanatory. Create all the directories as per parameter file in your environment.

Dropping a Database

SQL> shutdown abort;
ORACLE instance shut down.

SQL> startup mount exclusive restrict pfile=D:\FRATEST\FRADB\pfile\initFRADB.ora
ORACLE instance started.

Clear Flash Recovery Area

Scenerio:

If you see error in your alert log like below

ORA-19815: WARNING: db_recovery_file_dest_size of 6442450944 bytes is 100.00% used, and has 0 remaining bytes available.

ORA-273xx & ORA-04030 Errors

One of our client is facing the errors for ORA-273xx and ORA-04030 repeatedly in his alert/trace logs. After  so many errors instance is crashed and nothing is logged for this crash. This situation is not consistent, some times it  happens otherwise  everything goes smooth. I had been sent to visit the client side for investigations .

Start Oracle Clusterware 10gR2 Services Manually in Windows

Oracle Clusterware services in a Windows RAC environment should be allowed to start automatically, ideally, with the help of the Oracle Process Manager Service (OPMD).

Node 2 failed after applying OS Patches

Yesterday client applied OS security patches on the Node 2 (Windows 2003 64bit) and restarted the server. After restart there was hang observed for cluster related services.
I made all the Oracle Services to Manual as startup type and issued the following command.