Oracle alert.log "ORA-" Monitoring

Oracle DBAs often have a purchased tool or home-grown scripts to monitor the Oracle alert.log for errors.
DBAs will often search the alert.log for lines that begin with "ORA-", even though not all ORA- messages are database errors (user cancelling a long-running will query will create a ORA- message but this is not a database error).

Aside from the fact that all ORA- messages are not errors, not all errors are identified with ORA-. This is a list of some of the messages that do not begin with ORA- that a DBA may be interested in monitoring.

Fri Oct 27 14:35:43 2006
Failure to extend rollback segment because of 30036 condition
Failure to extend rollback segment because of 30036 condition
Failure to extend rollback segment because of 30036 condition


Thu Oct 26 07:11:29 2006
Failure to extend rollback segment 22 because of 30036 condition
FULL status of rollback segment 22 set.


Tue Oct 10 09:57:03 2006
PMON failed to acquire latch, see PMON dump
PMON failed to acquire latch, see PMON dump
PMON failed to acquire latch, see PMON dump
PMON failed to acquire latch, see PMON dump
PMON failed to acquire latch, see PMON dump


These two messages may be seen once when the instance is starting:
Deprecated system parameters with specified values:

Oracle instance running on a system with low open file descriptor limit. Tune your system to increase this limit to avoid severe performance degradation.

The number 30036 means ORA-30036.
Failure to extend rollback segment 8 because of 30036 conditionFULL status of rollback segment 8 set.

There are a couple ORA- messages for when the archive log destination is full.
Wed Jan 31 21:58:41 2007
ARC1: Evaluating archive log 5 thread 1 sequence 11273
ARC1: Archiving not possible: No primary destinations
ARC1: Failed to archive log 5 thread 1 sequence 11273
ARCH: Archival stopped, error occurred. Will continue retrying
Wed Jan 31 21:58:41 2007
ORACLE Instance SID - Archival Error
ARCH: Connecting to console port...
Wed Jan 31 21:58:41 2007
ORA-16014: log 5 sequence# 11273 not archived, no available destinations
ORA-00312: online log 5 thread 1: '/u101/oradata/SID/redo05a.log'
ARCH: Connecting to console port...
ARCH:

PC/MSWindows Utilities

system info as wallpaper
BgInfo is now a Microsoft product. There is install program, so place the executable where you won't lose it.

folder size
http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/

mother board monitor
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,7309-order,1-page,1-c,systemresourcestuneup/description.html

control what programs automatically start up
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,7976-order,1-page,1-c,desktop/description.html

intel application accelerator. replaces ata driver.
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/

Intel® Chipset Identification Utility
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df-external/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=861

Tuning Secure File Copy For Performance

When scp is too slow, and rdist over scp is more functionality than you need, look at sftp.

The sftp command set will be familiar to anyone who has used ftp.
Sftp allows use of a batch file, and it has a tunable buffer size. The -B flag controls the tunable buffer size and is useful when copying files over wide links that have latency. Tests over a DS3 have shown 20% throughput increases simply by increasing the default buffer of 32K. There are limits, and you can experiment on your platforms. Choosing a value too high will result in a message such as, "Outbound message too long 262169".