Oracle alert log location tips

Question:  What is the rule to find the location of the Oracle alert log.  I am on a new server and I cannot locate the alert logs.  How do you quickly find the location of the Oracle alert logs on unfamiliar servers?

Answer:  The Oracle alert log location of determined by the background dump destination and specified by the background_dump_dest parameter.  You can display the location of the alert log directory with this SQL*Plus command:

SQL> show parameter background

And in generic SQL you can use this command to find the location of the alert log:

select
   name
from
   v$parameter
where
   name = 'background_dump_destination';

You can also use OS commands to find the location of your Oracle alert log.  With the movement towards server consolidation you may have dozens of Oracle instances omn your server and the UNIX find command is one way to find all of the alert logs without querying inside each database.  Here is the UNIX/Linux command to locate the alert log:

find . –print|grep –i alert|more

Windows command to locate the alert log file:

dir /s alert*.log|more

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