Deleting Log, Directory, Audit, and Trace Files (SAP Library - SAP Database Guide: Oracle (BC-DB-ORA-DBA))

Deleting Log, Directory, Audit, and Trace Files

Use

It is important that you regularly delete old log, directory, audit and trace files, particularly those which were created by the database system.

If the log file directory for the database ALERT and trace files fills up, the database system issues error messages that can be hard to analyze. To free more space, be sure to regularly delete the operating system audit trail.

Prerequisites

Log and Trace Files

SAPDBA enables you to delete the following types of log and trace files:

Logs and any directories of SAPDBA, BRBACKUP, or BRARCHIVE

Note

SAPDBA logs and associated directories for which the action is marked as an error in the main log are not deleted from SAPDBA.

Caution

The deletion of BRBACKUP/BRARCHIVE logs means that the information for the corresponding backups in the Computing Center Management System (CCMS) can no longer be displayed.

Note that, if a backup for which the corresponding log has been deleted needs to be restored with SAPDBA, you must first restore the log.

Always make sure that there is a sufficiently large number of logs present. The SAPDBA recommended value is to only delete logs older than 30 days.

Oracle trace files: SAPDBA deletes the appropriate database and user trace files without backing them up (directory <SAPDATA_HOME>/saptrace/background or <SAPDATA_HOME>/saptrace/usertrace ).

Oracle audit logs: SAPDBA deletes the appropriate files without backing them up (directory <ORACLE_HOME>/rdbms/audit ). If more than 4095 files appear in the audit trail, SAPDBA can only delete 4095 audit logs at once. To delete additional logs, repeat the operation.

If you do not explicitly specify the number of days until deletion of the logs or directories, the default values from the profile init<DBSID>.dba are used. For more information, see Sample Initialization Profile.

ALERT File

The ALERT file ( alert_<DBSID>.log ) of the database system is stored in directory <SAPDATA_HOME>/saptrace/background . Database activities are logged continuously in this file. If database problems occur, you can use this file to find out what happened. The ALERT file contains very important information, so SAPDBA does not provide an option for deleting this file.

Audit Logs

Audit logs contain information about the inspected database action, the user who performed the operation, and the date and time of the operation. Audit logs can be saved in the operating system audit trail ( <ORACLE_HOME>/rdbms/audit ). Even when no explicit auditing is active, Oracle writes an auditing log for every logon to the database. As a result, the directory can grow very quickly. Be sure to regularly delete the old audit logs.

Procedure

To check whether the parameters beginning expir_period in init<DBSID>.dba are configured correctly, choose Show/Cleanup ® Show log files / directories ® <DBSID>.dba (SAPDBA profile) in SAPDBA

For more information, see Initialization Profile init<DBSID>.dba.

To delete files using the SAPDBA menu, choose Show/Cleanup ® Cleanup log files / directories.

Choose the appropriate option, depending on what type of object you want to clean up.

To delete objects using the command line, enter the following:

sapdba -cleanup

SAPDBA removes objects that are older than the specified interval (in days) according to the defaults set in the initialization profile init<DBSID>.dba .