Oracle Net8 Configuration and Troubleshooting

Generating Net8 Trace Files

Trace files represent the best way to get detailed information about what Net8 is doing behind the scenes, and they are extremely helpful in troubleshooting situations. A trace file is a text file in which a Net8 facility records very detailed information about every event that occurs and every action taken.

Trace files can grow to enormous sizes, and there’s a fair bit of overhead involved in writing to them, so in normal operation, trace files aren’t generated. Instead, you have to enable tracing when you need it to troubleshoot a problem, and then disable it afterwards.

Several Net8 facilities can generate trace files. These are listed in Table 10.7 along with the parameters used to control tracing, and the configuration files in which you set those parameters. To enable tracing of a listener, for example, you set various parameters in the listener.ora file.

Table 10-7. Net8 Trace File Parameters

Facility	Configuration File	Parameters
N et8 Client and Server	sqlnet.ora	TRACE_DIRECTORY_CLIENT TRACE_DIRECTORY_SERVER TRACE_FILE_CLIENT TRACE_FILE_SERVER TRACE_LEVEL_CLIENT TRACE_LEVEL_SERVER TRACE_UNIQUE_CLIENT
Listener	listener.ora	TRACE_DIRECTORY_listener_name TRACE_FILE_listener_name TRACE_FILELEN_listener_name TRACE_FILENO_listener_name TRACE_LEVEL_listener_name TRACE_TIMESTAMP_listener_name
Oracle Names	names.ora	NAMES.TRACE_DIRECTORY NAMES.TRACE_FILE NAMES.TRACE_FUNC NAMES.TRACE_LEVEL NAMES.TRACE_UNIQUE ...