Shutdown ORacle thru NT services

When I stop a Oracle service from W2k services screen then it issues a shutdown abort or ahutown immediate.
I am very new to w2k so no offence for asking a simple question

AFAIK, it's a shutdown immediate.

I checked the alert log file after I stopping the services and noticed the following.

--Oracle does not log the shutdown operation in the alert log file if service is shutdown.

--Oracle does a instance recovery when you stop and start the services.

Sample of Alert Log File when stopping and starting the services
---------------------------
alter database open
Beginning crash recovery of 1 threads
Tue Jun 26 14:19:22 2001
Thread recovery: start rolling forward thread 1
Recovery of Online Redo Log: Thread 1 Group 1 Seq 12127 Reading mem 0
Mem# 0 errs 0: C:\ORACLE\ORADATA\ORCL8I\REDO01.LOG
Tue Jun 26 14:19:23 2001
Thread recovery: finish rolling forward thread 1
Thread recovery: 22 data blocks read, 22 data blocks written, 41 redo blocks read
Crash recovery completed successfully
Tue Jun 26 14:19:25 2001
Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 12128
Thread 1 opened at log sequence 12128
Current log# 2 seq# 12128 mem# 0: C:\ORACLE\ORADATA\ORCL8I\REDO02.LOG
Successful open of redo thread 1.
Tue Jun 26 14:19:25 2001
SMON: enabling cache recovery
Tue Jun 26 14:19:25 2001
ARC0: media recovery disabled
Tue Jun 26 14:19:26 2001
SMON: enabling tx recovery
Tue Jun 26 14:20:37 2001
Completed: alter database open


Sample of Alert Log File when shutting down immediate and starting up the database using OEM
--------------------------------------------------------
Tue Jun 26 14:17:35 2001
/* OracleOEM */ ALTER DATABASE OPEN
Tue Jun 26 14:17:36 2001
Thread 1 opened at log sequence 12127
Current log# 1 seq# 12127 mem# 0: C:\ORACLE\ORADATA\ORCL8I\REDO01.LOG
Successful open of redo thread 1.
Tue Jun 26 14:17:36 2001
SMON: enabling cache recovery
Tue Jun 26 14:17:37 2001
ARC0: media recovery disabled
Tue Jun 26 14:17:38 2001
SMON: enabling tx recovery
Tue Jun 26 14:18:15 2001
Completed: /* OracleOEM */ ALTER DATABASE OPEN


From this it seems to me that Oracle does a shutdown abort when you stop the services as it is not doing instance recovery when you do a shutdown immediate.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks
Anurag

Well! Guys in that case it is always better to issue a shutdown immediate rather than shutting down the service.
ISn't it??

Hi,
Yes 110% right, you should not shutdown Oracle using service manager. The service is the link that is most crucial part associated with Instance and the system, which shouldn't be touched rather.

AFAIK, you can go in the registry and define the following keys :

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE]
"ORA_SID_SHUTDOWN"="TRUE"
"ORA_SID_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT"="60"

doing this will prevent Oracle from doing a shutdown abort when OracleServiceSID is stopped. in fact it will issue a shutdown immediate until timeout, and then a shutdown abort, this should prevent aborting the instance :)

Hi! Pipo,
Infact I also found another key in the registry
i.e. ORA_ORCL_SHUTDOWNTYPE with value i.
What does it mean?

Let's all go back to Oracle school ;)
Here is an overview of the startup and shutdown related registry entry's for 8i on windows NT / 2000 (from Metalink).

An overview of the startup and shutdown related entry's
-------------------------------------------------------

note: there are 3 bugs with this functionality:

bug:1568668 shows that the shutdown options
are not working on 8.1.7.0.0,
8.1.5 and 8.1.6 are NOT affected by this bug.
A fix is foreseen in 8.1.7.1.

bug:724051 is that an NT shutdown does not perform a clean
database shutdown due to a change in behavior from WINNT SP4
and higher versions.
Stopping the service itself is working fine, the fix is
placing an ORAIMR8.dll in the Oracle_home\bin directory
of the 8.1.6 database, the dll itself is included in
8.1.7.0.0 and 8.1.6.3.1.

bug:1397927 is about when using SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS)
in sqlnet.ora the 8.1.7.0.0 service won't open the database with
an ora-12640 in the ORACLE_HOME\database\oradim.log.
the fix is on metalink -> product:sql*Net, Platform:MS Windows NT
patch 1522966.
This problem occures on windows 2000 only, not on windows NT4

You need to have the following entry's in the registry in
HKLM\SOFTWARE\ORACLE\HOMEx location.
where x = from 0 to ...

Note: You can check if you are using the right oracle_home by the
ORACLE_HOME (gives the path) and ORACLE_HOME_NAME (gives the oracle home name)
in the HKLM\SOFTWARE\ORACLE\HOMEx key.

Replace the _SID_ in the following entry's with the SID of you database.

To enable the "clean shutdown" of a database when stopping the service.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

ORA_SID_SHUTDOWN
Possible values: TRUE or FALSE
Set this to TRUE to enable the proper shutdown of the database

ORA_SID_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT
Possible values: timeout in seconds (30 for example)
Sets the maximum time (in seconds) to wait for the
shutdown to complete before the service for a particular SID stops.
This timeout should be set high enough to give the database time
to complete the shutdown.
If this is lower then the time needed, you won't have a clean shutdown!
You can check this in the alert file.

ORA_SID_SHUTDOWNTYPE
Possible Values: i , t , a.
where n = shutdown normal
i = shutdown immediate
and a = shutdown abort

If the entry's are not set, stopping an service will do WORSE then an shutdown
abort. Windows NT / 2000 will just "clean" the memory. This could be compared
by a kill -9 on unix. This is likely to make any cold backup useless.

Please also note there is another NT parameter
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout" found in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
expressed in microseconds (1000 microseconds make one second).
This timeout should ALSO be set high enough to give the database time
to complete the shutdown (default is 20000).
see Microsoft technet for more info about this parameter.

To enable the automatic opening of the database when you start the service.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

ORA_SID_AUTOSTART
Possible values: TRUE or FALSE
Set this to TRUE to enable the automatic startup of the database

ORA_SID_PFILE
Possible values: the full path to the init.ora file
(d:\ora8i\admin\pfile)

Thanx, U have given me all the info I want.
Being a unix guy I hate working on NT/w2k - no offense

same for me, but I had to learn working with NT/2k since 80% of customers do have M$ products :(
for me, there is no comparison between working under NT and any X system :)