Oracle session zombie process

[Gloups]

Hi all,

i have an Oracle 9 on aix 5.2 ML4 installed.

Some times the Oracle instance seems to be freeze, no connection can be established even for shutdown.

After shutdown abort some zombie processes remains from oracle client connection are still present and canot be killed.

Did one of you already seen this type of problems ?


thank's in advance

 

[SantaMufasa]

...some zombie processes remain from oracle client connection, are still present, and cannot be killed.

If you are using AIX, then a Unix "kill -9 <process id>" of the remaining processes will kill those processes.


Let us know your findings.


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

 

[Gloups]

Thank's for your answer but even using kill -9 all process are still present.

 

[hoinz]

Hello Gloups,

from what you wrote I am not quite sure, if the processes really are what is called a zombie in Unix. And if so: You cannot kill a zombie; a zombie already is dead.

But there is another problem I have seen a few times, not on AIX (I don't work with it), but with other flavours of Unix: There is a living process, not a zombie, and kill -9 won't kill it.
It's a Unix problem, not an Oracle problem. So you might want to check in a Unix forum.

Short answer, afaik: The only reliable and always-working way of getting rid of these processes is: reboot

You may be able (depending on your flavour of ps command) to see that these processes are in status uninterruptible, or whatever it is called in AIX. If you are lucky, they will become interruptible again, sooner or later.

And I suppose that the Oracle client responsible for these processes is not on the same machine, but somewhere else on the network. Check your network; hardware problems may be the culprit. (Or maybe teach your users to log off gently, instead of just switching the computer off.)

hope this helps

 

[Gloups]

Thank's for your anwers hoinz, that's true that's not real zombies as said in unix and client are on other machines as you said.

I'm already looking for this type of problem on AIX but for the moment i didn't find anything about that.

 

[dbtoo2001]

?
Do the clients make a unix connection and then connect to oracle? Maybe they are using nohup?

http://www.idevelopment.info/data/U...unningUNIXCommandsImmunetoHangups_nohup.shtml

 

[Gloups]

No that's direct oracle connection via different types of client