Remote DBA Plans
Remote DBA Service

Scheduling and Customizing Oracle
Alert Reports

Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

In a UNIX environment, the Oracle Remote DBA can easily control the times when the STATSPACK alert reports are executed. Let’s begin by examining a UNIX crontab file that schedules these reports.

A Sample UNIX Crontab to Schedule Oracle Reports and Alerts

The sample UNIX crontab file that follows is used to schedule STATSPACK reports and alert scripts:

#****************************************************************
# This is the weekly table and index analyze job for the CBO
#****************************************************************
30 7 1 * * /home/analyze.ksh > /home/analyze.lst
#****************************************************************
# This is the weekly (Monday) object analyze and report for management
#****************************************************************
30 7 * * 1 /home/oracle/obj_stat/get_object_stats.ksh prodb1
00 8 * * 1 /home/obj_stat/run_object_report.ksh prodb1
#****************************************************************
# This is the daily STATSPACK exception report for the Remote DBAs
#****************************************************************
30 7 * * * /home/statspack/statspack_alert.ksh prodsid
#****************************************************************
# This is the daily generic alert report for the Remote DBAs
#****************************************************************
00 7 * * * /home/mon/oracheck.run prodsid > /home/mon/o.lst
#****************************************************************
# This is the daily vmstat collector & report for the Remote DBAs and SAs
#****************************************************************
00 7 * * * /home/vmstat/run_vmstat.ksh > /home/vmstat/r.lst
05 7 * * * /home/vmstat/run_vmstat_alert.ksh prodsid > /home/vmstat/v.lst
09 7 1 * * /home/vmstat/run_vmstat_weekly_alert.ksh prodb1
****************************************************************
# This is the daily iostat collector & report for the Remote DBAs and SAs
#****************************************************************
#00 7 * * * /home/iostat/run_iostat_solaris.ksh > /home/iostat/r.lst
#00 7 * * * /home/iostat/run_iostat.ksh prodsid > /home/iostat/v.lst
#****************************************************************
# This is the every 5 min. trace file alert report for the Remote DBAs
#****************************************************************
1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25,27,29,31,33,35,37,39,41,43,45,47,49,51,
53,55,57,59 * * * * /home/mon/trace_alert.ksh prodsid > /dev/null 2>&1
#****************************************************************
# This code ensures that the daemon to check for buffer busy waits
# is always running.
#****************************************************************
30 7 * * * /home/mon/run_busy.ksh > /dev/null 2>&1

We also need to modify these reports to send the information via e-mail to the appropriate person. The alert reports are designed to spool the output to a known filename, and the Remote DBA just needs to modify the commands that send the e-mail alert to customize the recipients’ e-mail addresses.

Let’s look at how it works. The Korn shell code tha follows checks the size of the alert report and mails the report to the Remote DBA if alerts were detected by the script:

var=`cat /tmp/statspack_alert.lst|wc -l`

if [[ $var -gt 1 ]];
   then
   echo       "*********************************************************************"
   echo "There are alerts"
   cat /tmp/statspack_alert.lst|mailx -s "Statspack Alert" \
   don@oracle.com \
   larry_ellison@us.oracle.com \
   james@us.oracle.com
   echo
   *******************************************************************"
exit

This is an excerpt from "Oracle9i High Performance tuning with STATSPACK" by Oracle Press.

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