Oracle Bug 4401119 for AIX Database crashes with ORA-221, ORA-206, ORA-202, ORA-27072

Bug 4401119 AIX: Crash possible on AIX (ORA-206)

This bug is marked as an important issue.

Affects:

Product (Component)	Oracle Server (Rdbms)
Range of versions believed to be affected	Versions < 11
Versions confirmed as being affected	· 10.1.0.2 · 10.1.0.3 · 10.1.0.4 · 10.2.0.1
Platforms affected	· IBM AIX5L Based Systems (64bit)

Fixed:

This issue is fixed in	· 10.1.0.5 (Server Patch Set) · 10.2.0.2 (Server Patch Set) · 11.1.0.6 (Base Release)
Symptoms:	Related To:
· Error May Occur · Corruption · Instance May Crash · ORA-206/ ORA-27072	· (None Specified)

Applies to:

Oracle Server - Enterprise Edition - Version: 10.1.0.2 to 10.1.0.4, 10.2.0.1
AIX5L Based Systems (64-bit)

Purpose

Alert users to possible database crashes with error 221 unable to write to controlfile on AIX 5L. The error stack that is generated is:

ORA-00221: error on write to controlfile
ORA-00206: error in writing (block 3, # blocks 1) of controlfile
ORA-00202: controlfile: '/u03/oradata/paimg/control03.ctl'
ORA-27072: File I/O error
IBM AIX RISC System/6000 Error: 22: Invalid argument
Additional information: 7

Scope and Application

This problem is specific to Oracle 10g on AIX 5L.

Database crashes with ORA-221, ORA-206, ORA-202, ORA-27072

Impact:

The database impact is severe since it causes the database to crash. In addition this error is usually the result of a resource
exhaustion. So once it is encountered it is more than likely that this problem will be encountered again on the production
system.

Workaround:

None. However the default server settings for AIX are:

MINIMUM number of servers [1]
MAXIMUM number of servers per cpu [100]
Maximum number of REQUESTS [4096]

This problem is improved slightly by changing the above values to something like:

MINIMUM number of servers (minservers) [64]
MAXIMUM number of servers per cpu(maxservers) [256]
Maximum number of REQUESTS (maxreqs) [8192]

Solution:

Apply patch for bug 4401119

References

BUG:4401119 - Database Down With Controlfile Corruption