If you want to look in the alert log, but don’t remember/know where it is.
Query the database
If you can query the database, you can use the V$DIAG_INFO view as described in the Oracle Database Administrator’s Guide:
- Connect to the database with SQL*Plus or another query tool, such as SQL Developer.
- View the locations with the V$DIAG_INFO view.
The text-only alert log is found at the Diag Trace location and is called alert_SID.log.
The xml alert log is called log.xml and is found at the Diag Alert location.
[simterm]
SELECT * FROM V$DIAG_INFO;
INST_ID NAME VALUE
——- ——————— —————————————
1 Diag Enabled TRUE
1 ADR Base /u01/oracle
1 ADR Home /u01/oracle/diag/rdbms/orclbi/orclbi
1 Diag Trace /u01/oracle/diag/rdbms/orclbi/orclbi/trace
1 Diag Alert /u01/oracle/diag/rdbms/orclbi/orclbi/alert
1 Diag Incident /u01/oracle/diag/rdbms/orclbi/orclbi/incident
1 Diag Cdump /u01/oracle/diag/rdbms/orclbi/orclbi/cdump
1 Health Monitor /u01/oracle/diag/rdbms/orclbi/orclbi/hm
1 Default Trace File /u01/oracle/diag/rdbms/orclbi/orclbi/trace/orcl_ora_22769.trc
1 Active Problem Count 8
1 Active Incident Count 20
[/simterm]
Use find
If you can’t query the database, you can search for the alert_SID.log or log.xml files using find. If you have $ORACLE_BASE set, start searching there. Otherwise start at /u01/app/oracle (unless you have it installed somewhere else of course). Examples:
[simterm]
$ find $ORACLE_BASE -name alert_*.log
$ find /u01/app/oracle -name log.xml
[/simterm]
The documentation
This is described in the Oracle Database Administrator’s Guide in the Managing Diagnostic Data chapter. Documentation for all releases found here:
https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/index.html
