Oracle Network Products Troubleshooting Guide

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NAMESCTL Utility Trace Parameter Descriptions

NAMESCTL.TRACE_ LEVEL

This parameter indicates the level at which the NAMESCTL program should be traced. It should only be used if NAMESCTL is suspected of causing problems. Setting the level to OFF disables trace. Trace should be OFF except for short diagnostic sessions.

Configuration file: SQLNET.ORA
Default value: OFF
OK to change? yes
Ranges of values: [OFF | USER | ADMIN]

OFF = No user-specified tracing. This value can be used to disable trace.
USER = End-user level: Trace to provide additional information to identify user-induced error conditions such as:

ADMIN = Administrator level: Trace to identify installation-specific problems, for substantiation of "finger pointing" in case of third-party stacks, and for the following situations:

NAMESCTL.TRACE_ FILE

This parameter generates the file in which the NAMESCTL trace output is placed. Note that for each trace session a trace output file is generated. On most operating systems, each trace file appends the process identifier of the current process to the filename so that previous files are not overwritten (if NAMESCTL.TRACE_UNIQUE is set to ON). The format of the appended process identifier is platform specific and is described in the Oracle operating system-specific manual for your platform.

Configuration file: SQLNET.ORA
Default value: namesctl
OK to change? yes
Ranges of values valid filename

Example: 

NAMESCTL.TRACE_FILE = NC
NAMESCTL.TRACE_UNIQUE = TRUE

On a UNIX machine, this example might generate a trace file called NC_5684.TRC.

Note: On most operating systems, TNS appends the .TRC suffix to the trace filename, so there is no need to specify it in the configuration file.

NAMESCTL.TRACE_ DIRECTORY

This parameter determines the name of the directory to which trace files from a NAMESCTL trace session are written. The default value is specific to each operating system.

Configuration file: SQLNET.ORA
Default value: none
OK to change? yes
Range of values: valid directory

Example: See your Oracle platform-specific
documentation.

NAMESCTL.TRACE_ UNIQUE

This parameter determines whether or not a unique trace file is created for NAMESCTL. By default, the value is OFF, and only one trace file is created for NAMESCTL. If the value is OFF, when a new trace file is created for NAMESCTL, it overwrites the existing file. If the value is set to ON, a process identifier is appended to the name of each trace file generated so that several can coexist.

The format of the appended process identifier is platform specific and is described in the Oracle operating system-specific manual for your platform. For example, on a UNIX machine the format would be similar to the following:

SERVERA_3123.TRC

You must set the NAMESCTL_TRACE_UNIQUE parameter from the SQLNET.ORA configuration file. You cannot set it from NAMESCTL.

Note: Trace files are usually very large. If this parameter is set to ON (or TRUE), the number of large trace files could interfere with machine performance. Therefore use it carefully.

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