Tales From A Lazy Fat DBA

Hi Guys,

Would like to discuss one problem that I was facing today in on one of the Oracle 12c Release 1 standalone database where application team started explaining the problem that they are getting when doing application restart, specially oracle NET exception of ‘Got minus one from a read call‘

Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: java.sql.SQLException: javax.resource.ResourceException: IJ000453: Unable to get managed connection for java:/jdbc/ProdMonkeyPD
    Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: javax.resource.ResourceException: IJ000453: Unable to get managed connection for java:/jdbc/ProdMonkeyPD
    Caused by: javax.resource.ResourceException: IJ000453: Unable to get managed connection for java:/jdbc/ProdMonkeyPD
    Caused by: javax.resource.ResourceException: IJ031084: Unable to create connection
    Caused by: java.sql.SQLRecoverableException: IO Error: Got minus one from a read call
    Caused by: oracle.net.ns.NetException: Got minus one from a read call"}}
 

They were suspecting the issue with the high number of opened files on OS. The files count was too high when listing using lsof command on this RHEL7 system and the count goes down once the services are stopped. well I was able to explain the difference that exists between RHEL6 & RHEL7 when doing count using lsof. It was in RHEL7/EL7 that shows output including TID as default compared to RHEL6/OL6. Hence the number of open files count increases in RHEL7 as compared to RHEL6. So, it has nothing to do with the error that they have reported.

So, next we have checked database alert log and it was all good, all clean, no errors nothing. I immediately checked the value of “OS_AUTHENT_PREFIX” parameter as it specifies a prefix that Oracle uses to authenticate users attempting to connect to the system. Oracle simply appends this value to the beginning of user’s operating system account name and password and which it later on compares. So, it was set to its default value that is OPS$ and was set for the backward compatibility with previous versions.

So, I have two solutions for the problem

– Set “OS_AUTHENT_PREFIX” to “” (a null string), thereby eliminating the addition of any prefix to operating system account names.
– Set “tcp.validnode_checking = no” in SQLNET.ora file
This is to enable and disable valid node checking for incoming connections. If this parameter is set to yes, then incoming connections are allowed only if they originate from a node that conforms to list specified by TCP.INVITED_NODES or TCP.EXCLUDED_NODES parameters.

So, I tried with the first option and rebooted the database to make changes persistent (this parameter is static) and asked application team to give it a try again, and as expected it worked. The error or the ORACLE NET exception ‘Got minus one from a read call‘ was resolved after applying the first fix itself.

Here the second option is valid too as that also does the same thing, but one fix at a time.

Hope It Helps
Prashant Dixit