ORA-27300: OS system dependent operation:fork failed with status: 12

[MoreFeo]

Hi, we're running oracle 10 on AIX 5.3 TL04.
We're experiencing some troubles with paging space.
We've got 7 GB real mem and 10 GB paging space, and smoetimes the paging space occupation increases and it "freezes" the server (no telnet nor console connection).

We've seen oracle has shown this error:

*** 2007-06-18 11:16:49.696
Dump diagnostics for process q002 pid 786600 which did not start after 120 seconds:
  (spawn_time:x10BF1F175 now:x10BF3CB36 diff:x1D9C1)
*** 2007-06-18 11:16:54.668
Dumping diagnostic information for q002:
OS pid = 786600
loadavg : 0.07 0.27 0.28
swap info: free_mem = 9.56M rsv = 40.00M
           alloc = 4397.23M avail = 10240.00M swap_free = 5842.77M
skgpgpstack: fgets() timed out after 60 seconds
skgpgpstack: pclose() timed out after 60 seconds
ERROR: process 786600 is not alive
*** 2007-06-18 11:19:41.152
*** 2007-06-18 11:27:36.403
Process startup failed, error stack:
ORA-27300: OS system dependent operation:fork failed with status: 12
ORA-27301: OS failure message: Not enough space
ORA-27302: failure occurred at: skgpspawn3

So we think it's oracle's fault, but we're not sure. We're AIX guys, not oracle, so we're not sure about this. Can anyone confirm if this is caused by oracle?

Thanks

 

[SantaMufasa]

MoreFeo" (that's an ugly screen name...I'd be fascinated to know how you chose it.)

Your problem appears to be a known bug in Oracle 10.2.0.2.0 (and earlier 10g versions): "Bug 3411021 Oracle process may die due to ORA-27300/ORA-27301/ORA-27302 at skgxppost1."

Oracle apparently solved the problem in Oracle 10.2.0.3.0. People have worked around the problem, but the least fuss/least muss solution may be simply patching to 10.2.0.3.0.

Let us know how you chose to resolve your particular challenge.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]