ORA-00204 tips

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Don Burleson Blog

ORA-00204: error in reading control file tips

Oracle Error Tips by Burleson Consulting

The Oracle docs note this on the ora-00204 error:

ORA-00204: error in reading (block string, # blocks string) of control file: Cause: A disk I/O failure was detected on reading the control file.; Action: Check if the disk is online, if it is not, bring it online and try a warm start again. If it is online, then you need to recover the disk.

Question:

Our database crashes every 3 or 4 months. In the alter log files, it reports:

LGWR: terminating instance due to error 204

Our DB was set up in last Sept., and above problem happened in last
December, this March and July. The explanation of ORA-00204 is 'disk I/O failure on reading control files). However, there was no hard disk error found in our system. The DB can not be re-started even though we reboot the machine. It can be recovered only by 'alter database open resetlogs'.

Answer:

There were several suggestions to resolve ORA-00204:

Set initial parameter:
control_file_record_keep_time=0
Increase redo log file size from 8MB to 50MB
You need to increase(not decrease MAXLOGHISTORY) when you recreate control file to open database. Then you can set parameters in init.ora and recreate control file again with smaller MAXLOGHISTORY.

You may also want to check out this information page about Oracle control file errors.

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ORA-00204: error in reading control file tips