Oracle Net8 Configuration and Troubleshooting

Chapter 10. Net8 Troubleshooting Techniques

Net8 is something that you hardly ever need to think about or deal with when it’s working, which is probably why it’s often so frustrating when it does not work. Suddenly, you have to dive into this area of Oracle that you aren’t too familiar with to fix a connectivity problem.

Fortunately, there are some tools and techniques that you can use to isolate and resolve problems. There are operating-system and Net8 utilities that you can use to test connectivity between a client and server. All the Net8 services, such as the Net8 Listener and Oracle Names, create log files that are sometimes helpful. In addition, for really intractable problems, you can enable Net8’s tracing features. Net8 trace files give you access to a wealth of detail about what is going on with respect to connectivity, and that information can help isolate many connectivity problems.

Testing Connectivity to the Server

The most common manifestation of a Net8 problem is the inability to run a program, connect to a database server, and log in to a database. There are many reasons why you might not be able to do that. When faced with such a problem, it’s important to follow the physical and logical chain of connectivity, testing each point of failure, until you’ve isolated the problem. We usually follow a process that looks somewhat like this:

1. Review the specific error messages received.

2. Test the underlying network connectivity between the client and the server.

3. Verify that ...