2009/01/05

Keep an Eye on CONTROL_FILE_RECORD_KEEP_TIME

Oracle Database: 10.2.0.2

CONTROL_FILE_RECORD_KEEP_TIME specifies the minimum number of days before a reusable
record in the control file can be used. In the event a new record needs to be added to a reusable section and the oldest record not aged enough, the record sectione expands.

You don't have to worry about this parameter if you use recovery catalog. Otherwise,
it is suggested that the DBA set this parameter to a value no less than the database
backup retention period.

This is the problem I met due to inappropriate settings.
The parameter is set to default (7 days), and the retention for backup is set to 8
days. During backup procedure, old archivelog records can not be found in controlfile
because the space is reused, but the archivelog files are still on disk. Everytime
the job is supposed to delete the files older than 8 days, it didn't because the
controlfile have no records for those fils. So, after a couple of days, the space for
archivelog is filled up.

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