Re: ORA-12571:TNS:PACKET WRITER FAILURE - NOT A TECH, BUT NEED 8i HELP BADLY

Jonathan,

You are going to have a difficult time with support on 8.1.5. Others will post that you should upgrade to the 8i Release 3 binaries asap. As of 31-OCT, 8.1.6 is off of maintenance. For security with respect to multiple TNS Listener vulnerabilities, you should at least patch to 8.1.7.1.5 (to 8.1.7.1.1 first) or straight to 8.1.7.2.1 (read the release notes for the patch sets).

Can you arrange for scheduling an upgrade to 8.1.7? Clear it with the vendor - e.g. Allaire - as far as if CF v4.0 works with an 8.1.7 database - it should.
You might want to consider contracting with a 3rd party to perform the upgrade, one that would provide on-going maintenance and support.

Things that you can check immediately:

EVENT Viewer

• system log - will indicate when services were started
• application log - will indicate when background processes were started.

ALERT log

• %ORACLE_BASE%\Admin\<db_name>\bdump\init%ORACLE_SID%.ora

see when the instance is first started, and how long until the database fully open. Check that crash recovery is not taking place, as that could cause quite a delay in opeining the database

TRACE files

• %ORACLE_BASE%\Admin\<db_name>\udump\*.log
• these would be referred to in the alter log.

If you are going to upgrade from 8.1.5 to 8.1.7 - make sure that you have both an export (full=y) and a cold backup before upgrading.

hth,

Paul

Jonathan Wolfsie wrote:

> My company has recently been deserted by the tech folks managing our
> systems, including the Oracle 8i db, which is the back-end to our
> website. Here's our platform:
>
> Compaq Proliant 3000
> OS:NT 4.0, OP 6
> Cold Fusion Server 4.0
> Oracle 8i - ver. 8.1.5
>
> Our website was running flawlessly until the following changes were
> made -
>
> Upgraded to service pack 6
> Installed NIMDA virus patch (from Microsoft)
> Updated Compaq controllers and bios (recommended by Compaq)
>
> After all was installed, we now experience the following symptoms from
> Oracle:
>
> - The database, which normally starts up almost instantly, is taking
> approx 8 minutes to get going
> - After up and running without issue for approx 5-10 minutes, the db
> shuts down with the following error message: ORA-12571:TNS:PACKET
> WRITER FAILURE. When the db is up, there is no connectivity problem
> with cold fusion server, the site runs as it were normal.
>
> I am in the unfortunate position of having to manage this issue with
> no experience, so any help or suggestions would be EXTREMELY
> appreciated.
>
> Thanks...JW
>
Received on Tue Oct 02 2001 - 17:53:27 CDT