Control file mysteriously locking!

[jfekula]

HELP!
I am simply out of ideas. About every 3 days or so our production DB shuts down. We are running Oracle 8.1.7 on Windows 2000. I thought it was backup related, but it's shutting down even when no backup is running. Somehow the controlfile is becoming locked and not released. Below is the info from the alert file and trace file. Any help would be greatly appreciated because I am officially stumped!

Alert file ----------
Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 4658
Current log# 2 seq# 4658 mem# 0: D:\ORACLE\ORADATA\PRISMPA2\REDO02.LOG
Wed May 22 09:51:11 2002
ARC0: Beginning to archive log# 1 seq# 4657
ARC0: Completed archiving log# 1 seq# 4657
Wed May 22 09:54:15 2002
Errors in file D:\oracle\admin\PRISMPA2\bdump\prismpa2CKPT.TRC:
ORA-00206: error in writing (block 3, # blocks 1) of controlfile
ORA-00202: controlfile: 'D:\ORACLE\ORADATA\PRISMPA2\CONTROL01.CTL'
ORA-27072: skgfdisp: I/O error
OSD-04008: WriteFile() failure, unable to write to file
O/S-Error: (OS 33) The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file.

Wed May 22 09:54:15 2002
CKPT: terminating instance due to error 221
Instance terminated by CKPT, pid = 2236

trace file ------
*** 2002-05-22 09:54:15.838
*** SESSION ID4.1) 2002-05-22 09:54:15.823
ORA-00206: error in writing (block 3, # blocks 1) of controlfile
ORA-00202: controlfile: 'D:\ORACLE\ORADATA\PRISMPA2\CONTROL01.CTL'
ORA-27072: skgfdisp: I/O error
OSD-04008: WriteFile() failure, unable to write to file
O/S-Error: (OS 33) The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file.
error 221 detected in background process

 

[alexhu]

You say 'the controlfile' - do you not have more than one ?

You should have (I suggest at least 3 on seperate disks)

You could restart the database leaving out the one you have problems with to see if it is disk related

Alex

 

[luusid]

I have run into this very problem today. Did this solution work or not? If not, is there another solution to the problem?

David

 

[rcurva]

You could be running a Backup Software or an Anti-Virus software that backups and locks the datafile, logfile, or controlfile after reading it.

Make sure that the directory of your file/s is not in a shared/network directory that has a history of intermittent connection.

Robbie

"The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it can possibly be avoided" -- Art of War

 

[jballum]

Did anybody solve this problem?

I have been seeing this problem in a 9i database.

The exact problem dealing with the control file being locked.

Thanx

JB

 

[luusid]

We are running Norton Antivirus CE on the server and believe the program was locking the file while scanning it. We ended up going into the scan configuration and adding the directory that contains the control files to the exclude list. Since we did this we haven't had any problems.

You should be able to do that with any antivirus software if you suspect it is doing this sort of thing.

David

 

[jballum]

There is no Antivirus software running on this server (they are going to be putting it on now after I just checked though).

Could there be anything else that might be locking it?

Thanx

JB

 

[luusid]

Could the directory be shared and an antivirus software program somewhere on the network is scanning the mapped drive? kind of stretching here, but that is all I can think of... Unless you have backup software that isn't releasing the file after backup and when the control file is accessed it is locked.

If you feel this isn't what's going on, I would consider calling Oracle support.

David