Re: Question about Oracle Datafiles on Solaris

From: Sybrand Bakker <postbus_at_sybrandb.demon.nl>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 20:25:10 +0100
Message-ID: <tbkk8ornq4rl47@beta-news.demon.nl>

"kipnukdog" <kipnukdog_at_netscape.net> wrote in message news:3ABA3F4B.82FCB75_at_netscape.net...
> Running Oracle (both 8.0.5 and 8.1.6) on Solaris 2.6 and 2.7
> respectively.
>
> I have a very simple question....
> When doing a Unix "file" command against Oracle datafiles, some return a
> status of "data" , others return a status
> of "ASCII text".
>
> Could someone explain this to me, as I don't understand why there is a
> difference, and what the difference means, if anything.
>
> Thanks.
>

Why would you bother?
the file command works with so-called 'magic codes' (as you might be aware put #!/usr/bin/ksh in a shell script,and file will recognize this as a Korn Shell script. If you don't put the line in, file won't recognize the script).
This means the output of file is highly independable. So accidentally Oracle put the magic byte for ascii text in the location file uses to interpret the data.
So why worry? There are far more important things in Oracle to deal with.

Hth,

Sybrand Bakker, Oracle DBA Received on Thu Mar 22 2001 - 13:25:10 CST