21c New Feature – Attention Log

Another new feature in Oracle 21c is the attention.log file.

The database alert.log contains lots of information – but a lot of the content of the alert log is just “informational” in nature.

Very often the DBA needs to process or interpret only information which requires his urgent attention.

Rather than have to scroll through many lines of the alert log to obtain information about critical database events, the DBA can now just view the single attention.log file.

So no more having to use things like sed, grep,awk to filter the alert log!

Messages in the attention log are classified by attention type like Error, Warning, Notification, or Additional information.

Messages are further classified even by urgency – like Immediate, Soon or Deferrable.

The file is also available in XML and JSON format.

[oracle@db21c ~]$ cd /u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/db21c_syd1tp/db21c/log

[oracle@db21c log]$ ls -l
total 84
drwxr-x--- 2 oracle asmadmin  4096 Dec 10 15:33 attention
-rw-r----- 1 oracle asmadmin  6239 Dec 13 05:36 attention.log



{
  "NOTIFICATION" : "Starting ORACLE instance (normal) (OS id: 86786)",
  "URGENCY"      : "INFO",
  "INFO"         : "Additional Information Not Available",
  "CAUSE"        : "A command to startup the instance was executed",
  "ACTION"       : "Check alert log for progress and completion of command",
  "CLASS"        : "CDB Instance / CDB ADMINISTRATOR / AL-1000",
  "TIME"         : "2020-12-10T15:54:27.606+00:00"
}

{
  "WARNING"      : "Heavy swapping observed on system",
  "URGENCY"      : "SOON",
  "INFO"         : "WARNING: Heavy swapping observed on system in last 5 mins. Heavy swapping can lead to timeouts, poor performance, and instance eviction. ",
  "CAUSE"        : "Memory usage by one more application is leading to heavy swapping",
  "ACTION"       : "Check alert log for more information, use tools to analyze memory usage and take action",
  "CLASS"        : "CDB Instance / SERVER ADMINISTRATOR / AL-2100",
  "TIME"         : "2020-12-13T05:36:14.365+00:00"
}


{
  "ERROR"        : "Shutting down ORACLE instance (abort) (OS id: 73032)",
  "URGENCY"      : "IMMEDIATE",
  "INFO"         : "Shutdown is initiated by dgmgrl@db21c (TNS V1-V3). ",
  "CAUSE"        : "A command to shutdown the instance was executed",
  "ACTION"       : "Check alert log for progress and completion of command",
  "CLASS"        : "CDB Instance / CDB ADMINISTRATOR / AL-1002",
  "TIME"         : "2021-01-08T05:31:34.139+00:00"
}