ORA-00600 during controlfile recreation

The destructive errors like ORA-00600, ORA-07445 etc show up at unusual times, one such perfect example of getting an ORA-00600 is explained below - it appeared during the execution of CREATE CONTROLFILE script. Before we go any further, here is a quick background of what's being done. A 10.2.0.1 database is to be migrated from one server to another.

As a proactive DBA, which I am not most of the time ;-) - I dumped the control file to the trace and went about creating the scripts to copy the files from the source to destination. All went well until I confronted ORA-600 during the control file recreation.

I had to quickly check the Oracle version which i am currently using, just to make sure there is not a mis-match between the source and destination Oracle binaries. The error pointed me out to a trace file that Oracle usually generates when it needs to provide more information on a particular error.

SQL> CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE DATABASE "PROD" NORESETLOGS ARCHIVELOG

*

ERROR at line 1:

ORA-01503: CREATE CONTROLFILE failed

ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kccscf_1], [9], [106012], [65535],

[], [], [], []

Here is the error entry in alert log

Errors in file /prd/u01/PROD/udump/prod_ora_12326.trc:

ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kccscf_1], [9], [106012], [65535], [], [], [], []

ORA-1503 signalled during: CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE DATABASE "PROD" NORESETLOGS  ARCHIVELOG

UNIX$> more /prd/u01/PROD/udump/prod_ora_12326.trc

ksedmp: internal or fatal error

ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kccscf_1], [9], [106012], [65535], [], [], [], []

Current SQL statement for this session:

CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE DATABASE "PROD" NORESETLOGS ARCHIVELOG

    MAXLOGFILES 255

    MAXLOGMEMBERS 5

    MAXDATAFILES 12144

    MAXINSTANCES 12

    MAXLOGHISTORY 106012

Everything looked fine but there is no clue as to what's causing the mighty ORA-600 in this occasion, I gave it a couple of tries myself to troubleshoot before turning over to Mr. Ellison's boys for help!!!. A severity - 1 was raised for this issue and I was pointed out at the value of MAXLOGHISTORY to be equal to 65535 as the maximum limit against the value that I had as 106012.

This looks silly, how come a trace controlfile that was dumped from an SqlPlus session have a value not recommended by Oracle itself. It was later reported by the Oracle technician that its a Bug in 10.2.0.1 which has been fixed in 10.2.0.4. Corrected script is shown below.

ALTER DATABASE BACKUP CONTROLFILE TO TRACE AS '/prd/u01/PROD/udump/prod_ora_12326.TXT' REUSE;

STARTUP NOMOUNT

CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE DATABASE "ORCL" NORESETLOGS ARCHIVELOG

    MAXLOGFILES 255

    MAXLOGMEMBERS 5

    MAXDATAFILES 12144

    MAXINSTANCES 12

    MAXLOGHISTORY 65535

LOGFILE

  GROUP 1 'D:\APP\CYBADMIN\ORADATA\ORCL\REDO01.LOG' SIZE 50M BLOCKSIZE 512,

  GROUP 2 'D:\APP\CYBADMIN\ORADATA\ORCL\REDO02.LOG' SIZE 50M BLOCKSIZE 512,

  GROUP 3 'D:\APP\CYBADMIN\ORADATA\ORCL\REDO03.LOG' SIZE 50M BLOCKSIZE 512

STANDBY LOGFILE

DATAFILE

  'D:\APP\CYBADMIN\ORADATA\ORCL\SYSTEM01.DBF',

  'D:\APP\CYBADMIN\ORADATA\ORCL\SYSAUX01.DBF',

  'D:\APP\CYBADMIN\ORADATA\ORCL\UNDOTBS01.DBF',

  'D:\APP\CYBADMIN\ORADATA\ORCL\USERS01.DBF',

  'D:\APP\CYBADMIN\ORADATA\ORCL\EXAMPLE01.DBF'

CHARACTER SET WE8MSWIN1252

;