ORA-39087: directory name directory_name is invalid

This error may be returned if you are trying to export or import using oracle data pump, but invalid directory name has been provided during this process. Following is an example of this.

$expdp directory=mydir dumpfile=mydump.dmp logfile=mylog.log schemas=c##salman Export: Release 12.1.0.2.0 - Production on Tue Jun 6 12:05:46 2017

ORA-15075: disk(s) are not visible cluster-wide

While adding a disk to a diskgroup in a RAC, you might face ORA-15075. Following is an example of this error.

SQL> alter diskgroup DATA add disk ‘ORCL:DATA4’, ‘ORCL:DATA5’; alter diskgroup DATA add disk ‘ORCL:DATA4’, ‘ORCL:DATA5’ * ERROR at line 1: ORA-15032: not all alterations performed ORA-15075: disk(s) are not visible cluster-wide

Deinstalling or Removing Oracle Software

We need to use “deinstall” utility to remove Oracle software from a system. In the following I will show how to deinstall Oracle grid infrastructure software. If you have an Oracle RDBMS home dependent on the GI home, then you should deinstall RDBMS software before deinstaling GI software. Process of deinstalling RDBMS home is similar to the deinstallation of grid infrastructure software.

ORA-01652: unable to extend temp segment by 128 in tablespace TEMP

Temporary tablespace is needed when Oracle needs to perform sorting, and doing so is not possible in the memory, therefore it utilizes temporary tablespace. ORA-01652 means that oracle needs to allocate space from temp tablespace and it is not able to do so because temp tablespace is full. Alert log file would log error as follows.

RMAN-08138: WARNING: archived log not deleted

Usually we do not need a backup of archived logs on standby site if backup is already configured on the primary database. In such scenario, if we try to delete old archived logs which have already been applied on the standby database my return “RMAN-08138: WARNING: archived log not deleted - must create more backups” if archive deletion policy is not properly set in the standby database.

ORA-01654 and ORA-03234 for index tablespace

When tables grow in size because of new data coming in, indexes also grow, and sometime indexes can grow even bigger as compare to table itself. There is a possibility that you see ORA-01654 while inserting/updating data because tablespace holding the index cannot be further extended and needs manual intervention to extend the tablespace so that index could further grow. Error would be returned to the application as well as reported in the alert log file.

Error 3113 in Primary Database while connecting Standby

Sometime you may see following error stack in your primary database alert log file.

Wed May 31 08:02:37 2017 LNS: Attempting destination LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_2 network reconnect (3113) LNS: Destination LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_2 network reconnect abandoned Error 3113 for archive log file 9 to 'standby_db' Errors in file D:\ORACLE\11203\diag\rdbms\standby_db\mydb\trace\mydb_nsa2_3544.trc: ORA-03113: end-of-file on communication channel LNS: Failed to archive log 9 thread 1 sequence 61239 (3113)

Fatal NI connect error 12541

If you see this error message in the alert log file of your primary database in a dataguard environment, it is most likely that listener on the standby database host(s) is not running. As a result, primary database will not be able to ship redo data to the standby database. This failure of log shipping will add lines similar to the following in the alert log file of the primary database.

Fatal NI connect error 12547, connecting to:

Sometimes you may see following error message in your alert log file. There is a similar Fatal NI error 12537 that appears in the alert log file when session exists during the session creation phase. But error 12547 comes when session terminates abnormally. For example, client application crashes without properly exiting the database, or sessions gets disconnected because of a network disconnection.

How to Enable Block Change Tracking

In RMAN incremental backup strategy, enabling block change tracking significantly increases incremental RMAN backups performance by helping RMAN to find out only changed/modified blocks (since last full backup) very fast, because only these are the blocks to be backed up during an incremental backup. List of these blocks (changed since last full backup) is maintained in the block change tracking file. In this article I will explain how to enable block change tracking.