control file grows

[yls177]

kccrsz: expanded controlfile section 9 from 14067 to 14294 records
requested to grow by 142 record(s); added 1 block(s) of records

i found this in the alert file. i was wondering why the controlfile could be expanded.. and my hunch was that there are actually datafiles being added which the control files need to be updated.. hence, the growth.. please verify. thanks

[rohitsn]

Hi,
Section 9 of the controlfile stores Redo Log History. Because of heavy load on system, too many redo logs are being generated. There is an initialization parameter CONTROL_FILE_RECORD_KEEP_TIME which specifies how many days the log history should be retained in controlfile. Default value is 7. When new redo history record is generated, if oracle does NOT find any record that can be replaced (older than the days specified in above mentioned parameter) then it
expands controlfile to write new record.

Regards,
Rohit Nirkhe,Oracle/Apps DBA,OCP 8i,OCA 9i
oracle-support@indiatimes.com

[pando]

control file grows when it has to, there is no worries about that

as Rohit suggested this time is about redo history, it can be several things, one for example is when you reached maxdatafiles specified in controlfile but in init.ora you have a higher db_files value in this case it can still grow by using db_files values (this works from 8i AFIAK)

[julian]

Originally posted by pando
... when you reached maxdatafiles specified in controlfile but in init.ora you have a higher db_files value in this case it can still grow by using db_files values (this works from 8i AFIAK)

True. Most people do not know that. You will be probably interested in reading Oracle Urban Legends:

http://www.dbatoolbox.com/WP2002_06/dba_unban.pdf