Excellent! Coming from you, it's worth *tons*. I'm glad you replied, Cary, and I'm glad to finally see the de facto OFA paper. Now I just need to figure out where I've seen the "oradata" directory slapped under ORACLE_BASE or ORACLE_HOME. Thanks! Rich -----Original Message----- From: Cary Millsap [mailto:cary.millsap@xxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 12:51 PM To: Jesse, Rich; stephenbooth.uk@xxxxxxxxx; jkstill@xxxxxxxxx Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: Inheriting a "interesting" recovery process I would agree that .log is a dangerous extension for files that you want *not* to get picked off by some SA's "find" command for deletion. And the OFA spec definitely does NOT put data files beneath ORACLE_BASE or ORACLE_HOME (http://www.hotsos.com/e-library/abstract.php?id=19). So I agree with you on both accounts. For what it's worth. Cary Millsap -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l