Re: Monitoring the alert log ...

On 10/09/06, stv <stvsmth_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I'm a newish DBA and I wanna simplify some daily checks. I'm curious
> as to how other people monitor the alert logs. Is this something most
> folks do?

I do, but from a 'belts and braces'paradigm. Anything important (i.e. that impacts the users) I would expect to pick up when it happens (either through a user problem report or another monitoring tool), checking the alert log is just a backstop to pickup anything error messages that didn't impact the users noticably so I can decide if it's something I need to deal with now, something I can deal with when I have time or something I need to note but not worry about unless it happens again soon.

> Also, what do other folks do about cycling the alert_SID.log? Is there
> a size you aim for? Date range?
>

Typically I go for archiving off the alert log (i.e. move the current log to alert_SID.TIMESTAMP.log then touch lert_SID.log) at the end of the nightly backup (actually just Monday to Friday for most systems as they don't see much use over the weekend) then check the archived copy.

i have another script that runs after backup that compresses any files over 20 days old (based on last accessed) and deletes any over 40 that runs against bdump, udump and a few other log destinations (logs from the backup jobs, applications, monitoring scripts &c).

Each day I (and the ops email address) get an email either saying "Nothing wrong" or listing the potential errors found. The reason for sending a mail even if there isn't a problem is that if the mail doesn't arrive then I know that either the script didn't run or it did but the message got lost/blocked somehow. Either way I want to know and look into it.

We're currently looking into some sort of console/dashboard for close-to-real-time monitoring.

Stephen

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