Yep I've had to use "sqlplus -prelim" to get hanganalyze and systemstate dump during my recurring hangs. Very nice to know about! Don. On 10/30/07, Jeremiah Wilton <jeremiah@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I just started a blog to track some of my hacking around in 11g. > > My first post is on a little known feature of SQL*Plus, actually > introduced in 10g, called the 'prelim' connection. Prelim allows you to > connect to an Oracle instance's SGA without allocating a session. This > is very handy when you are dealing with a completely hung instance that > is no longer accepting logins, even as SYSDBA. -- Don Seiler oracle: http://ora.seiler.us ultimate: http://www.mufc.us -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l