If ls -la wasn't working, I would check for OS problems:
disk errors in particular. Are there any error messages in
/var/adm/messages? Does the sys admin have any way to check if
there were kernel or memory problems? Does the database depend
on any nfs mounts (archive logs, for example)?

just some thoughts,
-Chris

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ashish Saxena [mailto:[Email Address Removed] Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 1:33 PM
> To: LazyDBA.com Discussion
> Subject: ORA-00447: fatal error in background process( Urgent!)
>
>
> Hello Gurus:
> Oracle 8.1.7.0.0
> Platform: SunOS 5.7 Generic_106541-16 sun4u sparc
> SUNW,Ultra-80
>
> One of our production databases was hung this morning.
> None of the unix commands(ls -la etc.) could work.
> svrmgrl was also hanging so I asked the sys admin to
> reboot the box. Upon starup, I lloked at the alert.log
> file. I had this following entry from the time
> database hanged.
>
> Fri Mar 29 08:40:30 2002
> WARNING: aiowait timed out 1 times
> CKPT: terminating instance due to error 1110
> Fri Mar 29 08:42:39 2002
> ARCH: Archival stopped, error occurred. Will continue
> retrying
> Fri Mar 29 08:42:39 2002
> Instance terminated by CKPT, pid = 571
>
> I looked at the trace files during this time & saw two
> of them.
> 1. rio06sj_ckpt_571.trc
<snip>>
> *** 2002-03-29 08:40:30.871
> *** SESSION ID:(4.1) 2002-03-29 08:40:30.487
> WARNING: aiowait timed out 1 times
> *** 2002-03-29 08:42:38.534
> error 1110 detected in background process
>
> And the other file is:
>
> 2. rio06sj_snp1_579.trc
> Dump file
<snip>
> *** 2002-03-29 08:42:39.257
> *** SESSION ID:(81.29837) 2002-03-29 08:42:38.639
> error 1110 detected in background process
> OPIRIP: Uncaught error 447. Error stack:
> ORA-00447: fatal error in background process
> ORA-01110: data file : ''
>
> Please let me know if this is an oracle bug or a unix
> CPU/MEMORY issue.
> Thanks,
>
> Ashish
>
>
>

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