Oracle Probe Alarms: Troubleshooting ORA-00257 and Downstream ORA-00942 Errors

Products

• DX Unified Infrastructure Management (Nimsoft / UIM)

Issue/Introduction

Intermittent Oracle probe alarms specifically reporting ORA-00257: Archiver error (Archiver destination full) may generate. 

Downstream errors may also be triggered alongside this, including ORA-24347 (NULL column warning) and ORA-00942 (table or view does not exist). These errors are reproducible and are known to happen once the Archiver becomes completely full.

Environment

• DX Unified Infrastructure Management  (UIM) 23.4.*
• Oracle probe (All supported versions)

Cause

The root cause originates from the ORA-00257 archiver error.

When the database recovery area or archive log destination is completely full, Oracle cannot write new redo logs, which freezes database changes. The Oracle probe, however, maintains a connection pool and may continue executing queries with already-established sessions.

The ORA-00942 error is a symptom of this restricted database state rather than an actual missing table or permanent permission issue. A SQL statement cannot find a specific table or view because a script trying to create or access a temporary table failed due to the database being locked up. When the archive space fills up, active sessions freeze or lose their state, causing subsequent queries to look for tables that were not successfully built.

Resolution

The resolution identifies that ORA-00257 acts as a blocker for write operations and downstream dynamic DDL/table creation. Addressing the archiver capacity resolves the subsequent alarms.

To mitigate monitoring noise and prevent unexpected database lockups, implement the following recommendations:

• Implement Proactive Monitoring: Ensure the DBA team has automated scripts or UIM checkpoints configured with proactive, lower thresholds.

• Monitor the Archive Dest: Specifically monitor the archive_log_dest checkpoint to alert administrators before the archiver hits 100% capacity.

• Tune Probe Retry Settings: If fluctuating messages cause monitoring noise, tune the probe's retry_interval or retry_count in the setup. This allows the database a moment to recover or settle before generating an alarm.