[Ocfs-devel] RE: [Ocfs-users] ocfs issues with 9.2.0.3

[Karthik Ramadoss]

Jim,

      I appreciate your response. I understand we are NOT supposed to
use non-Oracle files on ocfs and we are not.
But, the Scenario#2 occurs even when I resize a tablespace or create a
tablespace from an sqlplus session in Oracle.

      Sometimes, the archiver process hangs with 'D' state and puts
lots of the below messages in the alert log.
ARC1: Evaluating archive   log 3 thread 2 sequence 3
ARC1: Unable to archive log 3 thread 2 sequence 3
      We are using a common archive destination for both instances and
thats a directory on ocfs. I wonder if that could be causing the lockup
for this particular archive issue. But that still doesnt explain why
any major change to datafile like resizing or creating through Oracle
would hang.
      With our 11.5.9 - 9.2.0.3 setup we dont have Oracle-Managed Files
implemented as you may know, 11.5.9 comes with 
almost 400 seeded datafiles. 

Thanks,
Karthik

>>> "Fennacy, Jim" <jimf at HDCSI.com> 11/11/2003 11:47:37 AM >>>
I had the chance to talk with one of the OCFS developers recently.  
I have not experienced scenario #1, so I cannot speak to that.

But for scenario #2...

OCFS v1.9 does NOT support non-Oracle managed files on the OCFS
partition.
Scenario #2 you indicated will occur.  Oracle's UTL_FILE package does
not
count as "Oracle managed files", so you cannot create/read/write files
using
UTL_FILE package.  I was told to NEVER put any files on OCFS.  Let
Oracle do
all the work.  At best there will be speed degradation; at worst the
system
will become unusable.

OCFS v2.0 will (1) support installing a shared Oracle Home on OCFS and
(2)
increased performance.  But only Oracle-managed files can exist on
OCFS.

OCFS v2.x will support any file on OCFS.  This version will be
released
along with Oracle 10G, but may be able to work with Oracle 9i.

I was also told that non-Oracle managed files on OCFS v1.9 and v2.0
only
affects Linux, technically.  Windows does not have the same problem. 
But
Oracle will not support it.

We are doing OFCS on a 2-node Redhat AS2.1 cluster at two different
sites.
We had a large number of non-Oracle files on OCFS for a couple months
and
experienced repeated problems.  Since moving all the files off OCFS
the
problems have disappeared.

Hope this helps.

-----Original Message-----
From: Karthik Ramadoss [mailto:krama at asugroup.com] 
Sent: Nov 11, 2003 8:19 AM
To: ocfs-devel at oss.oracle.com; ocfs-users at oss.oracle.com 
Subject: [Ocfs-users] ocfs issues with 9.2.0.3


I am starting to see a few issues with OCFS and 9.2.0.3 RAC on
redHat Linux AS 2.1. Wondering if there is anyone out there
experiencing similar issues... 

a few pointers to the issues..
1. OCFS read/write performance is way lower than a read/write to a raw
device.. i can give you some comparison numbers..

2. Writes to shared disk with ocfs would get locked up by one server..
it doesnt have to even be an oracle process.. just a file copy will
lock up the directory and the other server trying to access the same
directory in the shared disk will just hang (os process has a state
'D').... the only way to free
this up is to unmount the shared disks from the other server.. even
killing the
process which is hanging doesnt work (kill -9).. 'strace -p' also
hangs
and obviously the process is waiting on io..

Is there anyone else experiencing this kind of issue? 

Thanks
Karthik Ramadoss
Oracle Apps DBA 
The ASU Group

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