Database strange behaviour

Hi lists

has anybody come across this situation?

solaris:2.6
DB: 8i
db in NOARCHIVELOG mode , but ARCH background process is running.
(LOG_ARCHIVE_START=TRUE)
The database is up and running. But we were unable to issue any query even <desc table>

just the statement <desc table> got hung. I checked whether the db has anyproblem. All background processes are running (v$session). But at O/S level no thread is existing for this processes.

ps -ef |grep smon
(This resulted count Zero)

and

ps -ef |grep dev2 (dbname dev2)
(This resulted that there are live connections to database.

Checked for alert log. In that I have a last message. ARC0: Media recovery disabled on Dec 7th (today Dec 12th).

As it is a test db I issued shutdown immediate. against statement hung. Nothing is updated in alert log. I issued switch log to do a shutdown abort. Again the same situaion.

At last I issued abort and restarted. DB started without any problems.

Even after taking the db down, I found some local connections existing at os level that are connected to this database. I manually killed them (kill -9 pid.)

 Why background processes are not displayed at OS level?

and is there any problem is the db is running in NOARCHIVE mode and ARCH process is started.

Thnx in advance

Srinvias

-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: Tatireddy, Shrinivas (MED, Keane)
  INET: Shrinivas.Tatireddy_at_med.ge.com

Fat City Network Services    -- (858) 538-5051  FAX: (858) 538-5051
San Diego, California        -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L


(or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from).  You may

also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).