Question: I understand that I need to
develop a script to monitor my Oracle alert logs and send out alerts
where unexpected errors occur, What are the recommended ways
of monitoring the Oracle alert log?
Answer: Its
important to monitor the Oracle alert log and send alerts when
serious errors are logged into the alert log.
It can take weeks to
write a comprehensive set of intelligent scripts to scan the
alert logs for important massages.
If you don't want to write your own Oracle
monitoring scripts, see my
Oracle script download.
Many people monitor the alert log with
UNIX/Linux shell scripts. When monitoring the alert log,
it is critical to filter-out warnings and only monitor for
unexpected errors. Hence, your monitoring script should
contain a "white list" of errors to bypass and monitor for any
messages (those beginning with ORA-") that are not on the white
list.
Most Oracle alert log monitors will
search for errors every file monitors, only searching the
last 100 lines of the existing alert log.
