Interesting note: Same backup process, same way of making the connection, same tnsnames.ora, sqlnet.ora but backing up to tape versus disk I get the following after a successful connection to the target and successful allocation of 4 channels: RMAN-12001: could not open channel t5 RMAN-10008: could not create channel context RMAN-10003: unable to connect to target database using connect string "user/pass@fully qualified hostname" ORA-12500: TNS:listener failed to start a dedicated server process AND THE CONNECTION TO THTE TARGET WAS ALREADY MADE - IT IS IN ALLOCATING CHANNEL 5 THAT THERE IS AN ERROR! -----Original Message----- From: Stankus, Paula G=20 Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 4:43 AM To: 'tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'; Oracle-L@Freelists. Org (E-mail) Subject: rman failure ORA-04030 indicates memory issue Rman fails with: I notice that=20 A. A number of batch processes were added to database and likely using a good deal of "sort" area as large batch processes often do B. Volume of data added last night. C. This error occurred along with another error: ORA-12540: TNS:internal limit restriction exceeded ORA-04030: out of process memory when trying to allocate 524824 bytes (pga heap,KSFQ Buffers) I looked at TOP on Solaris while running the job that failed with ORA-04030 and out of 8 Gb, 4Gb of RAM were still showing as available. I decreased the filesperset in rman from 10 to 4 and am concerned with the degradation of runtime for my backup processes. The pga_aggregate_target is set at pga_aggregate_target=3D1610612736 sga_max_size=3D2147483648 processes=3D150. I plan to look at the pga_aggregate_target related views. I also noticed in the alert.log the following: ORA-07445: exception encountered: core dump [0000000101D51DF0] [SIGBUS] [Object specific hardware error] [0xFFFFFFFF7CA9FE90] [] [] Along with a trace file with a specific SQL statement. =20 Question: How appropriate/inappropriate are the pga_aggregate_target, sga_max_size given 8Gb RAM and that this is the only database on the system? -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l