Oracle 11.1.0.7.0 bug

This week, two days back I hit a bug in Oracle 11.1.0.7.0

If you get following error while database start up or if your database crashed due to SAN unavailability, unexpected server crash, power outage etc and if you're starting database and get following error.

ORA-27167: Attempt to determine if Oracle binary image is stored on remote server failed
ORA-27300: OS system dependent operation:parse_df failed with status: 2
ORA-27301: OS failure message: No such file or directory
ORA-27302: failure occurred at: parse failed


$ sqlplus '/as sysdba'
SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production on Thu Jun 24 07:27:29 2010
Copyright (c) 1982, 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Connected to an idle instance.
SQL> startup
ORA-00445: background process "MMNL" did not start after 120 seconds
This error indicate that you have hit a bug 6813883 on oracle 11.1.0.7 version [Metalink article id: 784754.1]

After installing patch 6813883 using Opatch utility database startup went very well and now databases are running like a Piece of cake!

Hope this helps someone...

Modify number of CPUs from a pool/pset while it is running

Sometimes you need to modify number of CPU's for a perticular pool. In this case you only need to transfer #CPUs from the pset pset_default to the pset of your pool.

In my case I've two psets available with me -

# poolcfg -dc info

[... Long Lines of Output ...]

pset oracle_pset
                       int pset.sys_id 1
                       boolean pset.default false
                       uint pset.min 4
                       uint pset.max 4
                       string pset.units population
                       uint pset.load 5563
                       uint pset.size 4
                       string pset.comment

pset pset_default
                        int pset.sys_id -1
                        boolean pset.default true
                        uint pset.min 1
                        uint pset.max 65536
                        string pset.units population
                        uint pset.load 574
                        uint pset.size 12
                        string pset.comment


[... Long Lines of Output ...]

So here you can see that I've 2 processor sets named oracle_pset having 4 CPUs & pset_default having 12 CPUs. Now the situation is, application/DB demands more CPU capacity than currently I have. So in this case you can modify number of CPUs from running pool/pset.

Here is a method to do so -

Save you current configuration

# pooladm -s

Modify the CPU's using "-d" - -d operates directly on the kernel state.

# poolcfg -dc 'modify pset oracle_pset ( uint pset.min = 6 ; uint pset.max = 6)'

Transfer 2 CPUs from pset_default to oracle_pset

# poolcfg -dc 'transfer 2 from pset pset_default to oracle_pset' OR if you want a specific processor then - # poolcfg -dc 'transfer to pset oracpu_pset ( cpu 5)'

Update the configuration in /etc/pooladm.conf file.

# pooladm -c

# poolcfg -dc info

[... Long Lines of Output ...]


pset oracpu_pset


                          int pset.sys_id 1
                          boolean pset.default false
                          uint pset.min 6
                          uint pset.max 6
                          string pset.units population
                          uint pset.load 2009
                          uint pset.size 6
                         string pset.comment


pset pset_default


                          int pset.sys_id -1
                          boolean pset.default true
                          uint pset.min 1
                          uint pset.max 65536
                          string pset.units population
                          uint pset.load 498
                          uint pset.size 10
                          string pset.comment


[... Long Lines of Output ...]

Runtime example –

$vmstat 5
kthr memory page disk faults cpu

r b w swap free re mf pi po fr de sr sd sd sd sd in sy cs us sy id0 0 0 36536976 6040672 244 1343 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1105 17598 1840 16 14 70
0 0 0 36529296 6040216 96 341 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 1034 12900 1268 13 8 79
0 0 0 36531896 6039864 367 1412 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1145 33910 1625 16 15 69

processors removed: 4, 5
3 0 0 39565360 8833624 597 2343 0 0 0 0 0 7 7 0 0 1379 33522 5416 24 14 62
0 0 0 36533816 6040080 516 1999 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 823 15979 1893 21 17 62
7 0 0 36500632 6013496 788 4785 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 0 0 1029 69589 1848 37 24 39
16 0 0 36370632 5920912 2258 14106 0 0 0 0 0 3 6 0 0 1819 165593 3616 62 38 0
15 0 0 36466944 5978160 911 4854 0 0 0 0 0 9 9 0 0 2095 298114 3968 67 32 0
8 0 0 36579424 6058944 511 3664 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1690 238234 4102 57 30 13
processors added: 4, 5
[see the perfromance boost up, look at processor idle]
3 0 0 39565240 8833520 626 2467 0 0 0 0 0 7 7 0 0 9437 34315 7514 16 11 73
1 0 0 36645344 6103968 163 630 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1243 14485 1989 15 9 76
1 0 0 36612504 6079352 205 1985 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1393 86756 1705 28 15 57
0 0 0 36648152 6102368 199 1015 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1247 17551 1909 18 10 72
0 0 0 36659264 6114368 46 672 0 0 0 0 0 6 6 0 0 1154 11101 1670 13 8 80
1 0 0 36668248 6118136 297 1124 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 1493 37868 3793 18 16 66
1 0 0 36674216 6121112 48 430 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1268 12972 2075 14 9 77
2 0 0 36677736 6124456 317 1402 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1414 18159 2336 17 10 73
1 0 0 36673120 6120576 365 1361 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1360 17413 2494 14 10 75
1 0 0 36678104 6124032 217 713 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1107 12223 1781 14 12 74

Hope this helps!