RE: FW: My worst nightmare - ORA-8103

  • From: "Mark W. Farnham" <mwf@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: <gerwin.hendriksen@xxxxxxxxx>, "'Maureen English'" <maureen.english@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 15:43:30 -0400

To be specific, if a particular query can have all its column references 
satisfied by an index, that can happen if the CBO plans it that way without 
reference to the table. (Typically a fast full scan or an index range scan). 
The index does contain the rowid, so this can be useful for getting the rowids 
that you have for blocks that are corrupt to confirm the 480 missing rows 
you’ve been referencing.

 

WHEN it is the case that some index or other has all the essential columns you 
need, then you can get back those pieces without referencing the table itself. 
Unindexed columns are in the proverbial bit bucket in this case.

 

Usually folks do not index scalar numbers in tables, so this is typically not a 
complete solution, but knowing exactly the KEYs for which you are missing some 
data is very helpful if you are trying to reconstruct data.

 

Incomplete transactions that failed to be rolled back may affect the ability to 
read indexes as well (I’m really not sure), so +1 on Gerwin’s concerns below.

 

mwf

 

From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Gerwin Hendriksen
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 1:11 AM
To: Maureen English
Cc: mwf@xxxxxxxx; oracle-l
Subject: Re: FW: My worst nightmare - ORA-8103

 

Hello Maureen,

I think Marc might be right with index suggestion. What worries me is the fact 
you had a corrupted undo tablespace. I guess you used parameters like 
'_corrupted_rollback_segments' and/or '_offline_rollback_segments' to startup 
your database before able to create a new undo tablespace. Can you explain how 
this was done?

Can you also state what kind of errors you encountered in your database at the 
time you recognized a corrupted undo tablespace? The problem is that most of 
this problems are going with ORA-600 errors in the 4000 range (transaction 
layer in the RDBMS code). So the problem you see with the table involved giving 
ORA-8103 might be just one of the problems in your database. Maybe some others 
have simply not been touched yet (don't you see any errors in your alert file?).

If the database was openened with one of the underscore parameters I mentioned 
the only valid thing to do is recreating the database by export / import. This 
is probably a very big job, but in my opinion the only official Oracle 
supported way to run the database.

With kind regards,

Gerwin Hendriksen

 

2014-06-12 6:09 GMT+02:00 Maureen English <maureen.english@xxxxxxxxxx>:

Thanks!  I updated our ticket with Oracle asking for info on this bug.  I can't 
find anything about it on Metalink.

Regarding Mark's post, does this mean that the reason users aren't seeing any 
problems is because
they are able to access the data because the application uses the indexes when 
querying?

We did have to create a new undo tablespace due to corruption in the undo 
tablespace.

At least one of the indexes got an ORA-8103 when running analyze on it.  I 
didn't check the others.
Now I'm starting to panic again.  Oracle says that the data is lost, but now it 
might not be???

Interestingly enough, we were able to fix the other issues that we've found by 
recreating indexes, or stepping through
a table using a value from a unique index and then find the corrupt or 
duplicate rows and delete them.  This table
doesn't have a unique index...and it has 553M+ rows.  It takes 20 minutes just 
to get a rowcount back :-(

I ended up following Oracle's suggestion of copying the rows that didn't return 
the ORA-8102 error to another table,
exported that table, truncated my application table, dropped the indexes on the 
application table and imported the
data back in.  I'm currently rebuilding the indexes.  Tomorrow will be when the 
2 main Finance users will check things
out and let me know the status.

I'm so dreading the possibility of someone telling me that all of a sudden 
nothing balances...especially when it all
seems to be in balance now....

- Maureen





On 6/11/2014 5:59 AM, Gerwin Hendriksen wrote:

Hello Maureen,

The ORA-8103 can occur when the block contains a vector to an undo segment and 
for some reason the change can't be found
in the undo segment. Years ago I logged a bug at Oracle (at that time working 
for Oracle Support) describing a situation
when recovering a database ending in an ORA-8103 or ORA-600 [4146], when 
selecting a table. Because the issue described
here is in a reporting database, this bug although a very old bug could be 
underneath. The bug is caused by the way redo
is applied and a small issue there might give the same situation as described 
in the bug. The bug was filed 31 march
2001 and has number 1714688, the bug is probably never really fixed because 
fixing it would mean a major design change
in the redo apply. Further more the bug was encountered due to human error in 
the way the recovery was done. Just ask
support that this bug might give an idea why you encounter the ORA-8103.

Good luck and kind regards,

Gerwin Hendriksen



2014-06-11 14:01 GMT+02:00 Mark W. Farnham <mwf@xxxxxxxx <mailto:mwf@xxxxxxxx>>:



    Sorry, missed the list.

    -----Original Message-----

    From: Mark W. Farnham [mailto:mwf@xxxxxxxx <mailto:mwf@xxxxxxxx>]
    Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 2:43 PM

    To: 'maureen.english@xxxxxxxxxx <mailto:maureen.english@xxxxxxxxxx>'
    Subject: RE: My worst nightmare - ORA-8103

    If a unique index survives, you should be able to retrieve the rowids for
    the rows not in your recovery target table with a minus.
    Then, using the rowids and column sets for indexes, you can retrieve at
    least those column values from the indexes.
    This at least should provide you with a complete set of keys for the missing
    rows.

    I presume you lack the ability to do individual block patching via RMAN,
    etc.

    good luck,

    mwf

    -----Original Message-----

    From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]
    On Behalf Of Maureen English
    Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 2:29 PM

    To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
    Subject: My worst nightmare - ORA-8103

    Hi,

    Original post to BOracle list...apologies to those who are seeing this
    again.

    On 5/31, the refresh of a materialized view in our reporting instance failed
    with an ORA-8103 error, as did a gather stats job for the same table in the
    production database.  We had an application upgrade done on 6/1 and copied
    our production database to a preprod version on 6/2, so the errors weren't
    caught immediately.

    Users complained that the current data wasn't available in the reporting
    instance but my attempts to refresh and recreate all failed with the same
    ORA-8103 error.

    I've been working with Oracle Support since early last week and keep hitting
    brick walls.  At the moment, we've managed to copy 'uncorrupted' rows out of
    the table in our preproduction database and are 480 rows short in a table
    with 550M rows in it.  Oracle is currently working to identify the rowids of
    the corrupt blocks based on the output in a trace file generated by a
    failing query.

    I'm looking at Document 336133.1 while I wait for more info from Oracle.

    Anyone have any comments/suggestions/other info that might help identify and
    fix the problem?  We really can't afford to lose that much data.  We're
    working on recovering our database to a different location to try to get
    back any data that we lose, but since I don't have any idea what caused the
    corruption, I'm lost.

    - Maureen
    --
    //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l


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    //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l





-- 
Maureen English
Lead Database Administrator
University of Alaska
Fairbanks, AK
(907) 450-8329 <tel:%28907%29%20450-8329> 

 

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