How to resize the Oracle database alert.log for RSA Identity Governance & Lifecycle
Originally Published: 2018-09-12
Last Modified: 2022-06-20
Article Number
000063923
Applies To
RSA Product Set: Identity Governance & Lifecycle
RSA Product/Service Type: Appliance
 
Issue
The database alert log for the Oracle database, which is by default located in /u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/avdb/AVDB/trace/alert_AVDB.log may grow to an unreasonable size which makes it hard to edit/handle it. It may also contain data from many years ago, which is unnecessary for database management and irrelevant for uploads to RSA Support.
Tasks
Archive the current database alert log and create a fresh new one.
Resolution
The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply move/rename the file and let Oracle create a new one.

You can do this associated with an Oracle restart, or while the database is running.
  1. In either case, rename the file:
mv /u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/avdb/AVDB/trace/alert_AVDB.log /u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/avdb/AVDB/trace/alert_AVDB_<date>.log
  1. Upon Oracle startup, a new file named alert_AVDB.log will be created in the same location.
  2. If you rename the file while the database is running, and do not want to wait until the database writes to it to ensure everything is ok, you can issue the following command which forces a write to the alert log and will recreate the file at this time:
sqlplus / as sysdba 
SQL> alter system switch logfile
SQL> exit

All operations described here require access to the Linux oracle account.

  1. After running the alter command you will have these files:
oracle@acm-702:/u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/avdb/AVDB/trace> ls -ltr *.log
-rw-r----- 1 oracle oinstall 1737472 Sep 10 20:39 alert_AVDB_9-10-2018.log
-rw-r----- 1 oracle oinstall    3090 Sep 10 20:41 alert_AVDB.log
  1. If you used the switch logfile method on the running database, your new alert log will show this entry:
oracle@acm-702:/u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/avdb/AVDB/trace> cat alert_AVDB.log
Mon Sep 10 20:41:31 2018
Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 559 (LGWR switch)
  Current log# 1 seq# 559 mem# 0: /u01/app/oracle/oradata/AVDB/redo01.log
  1. From this point the database will write to the new alert log.
Notes
These instructions are mainly intended for RSA Identity Governance & Lifecycle Hardware Appliance customers and customers with Software Appliances with an RSA supplied database. Customers with remote databases are encouraged to contact their DBAs for this task.

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