Dropping Undo Tablespace 9i

Question

Hey Folks,
I really need some help here.
I'm trying to drop/recreate the undo tablespace (currently 25gig) Oracle 9i
When I try to drop the undo tablespace 'UNDOTBS1' I get the following error:
“ORA-01548: active rollback segment '_SYSSMU1$' found, terminate dropping tablespace”
Here's what I have tried so far:
- Bounced the DB several times hoping to get rid of the reference to the active rollback segment. No luck.
- Created a new undo table space
- Tried 'Alter system set undo_tablespace=new_one' (noticed that 10 new rollback segs were created '_SYSMU11$..SYSMU20$' pointing to the new undo tablespace)
- I then performed an offline drop of the undo tablespace data file. After the offline drop, the system rollback segs SYSMU01$..SYSMU10$ went offline as would be expected.
- Even with the new undo tablespace, all other application tablespaces still use the old undo which due to the offline drop, no inserts, deletes, etc. will work.
After all the above, I still get the same error when trying to drop the undo tablespace.
Any ideas? Ideally I would like to be able to drop the undo tablespace and recreate it, but at this point I'd be happy to bring back the undo tablespace datafile so we can at least use the database again.
Thanks in advance!!
Colin

Answer 1

SQL> show parameters undo
undo_retention integer
10800
undo_suppress_errors boolean
FALSE
undo_tablespace string
UNDOTBS03
r.- The undo tablespace which the database is looking for is this one ( UNDOTBS03 )
What is strange about the lines above is that I have
all those params above commented out in my
\pfile\init.ora file (and have bounced the db).
I’m not sure why they are still showing up.
r.- Perhaps your instance is started with the spfile instead of the init file
Here's what we did after the UNDOTBS1 tablespace
caused the disk to run out of space during a large
import (from now on we are going to use commit = y):
1. Created a new undo tablespace UNDOTBS03 - got
errors so instead we to created it as a temp
tablespace UNDOTBS03 which worked. r.- Yes, but that tablespace was created as a UNDO TABLESPACE ?
2. Tried to drop UNDOTBS1 got the following error
msg:
ORA-01548: active rollback segment '_SYSSMU1$' found,
terminate dropping tablespacer.- Of course, the database did not allow to drop it beacause there were pending transactions
3. SQL> alter system set undo_tablespace =
'UNDOTBS03' scope = both. Tried dropping UNDOTBS1.
Same error as in #2 above.r.- There were still pending transactions with the older undo tablespace
4. We then offline dropped the datafile associated
with UNDOTBS1 hoping that would then allow us to drop
UNDOTBS1. Same error as #2.r.- That was the worst you did. You can not drop a tablespace so...
5. Then tried creating a undo tablespace again:
Create UNDO tablespace undo_temp
datafile 'D:\oracle\oradata\usbperf\undo_temp.DBF'
size 25m autoextend on;
Error on line 0
Create UNDO Tablespace undo_temp
datafile 'D:\oracle\oradata\usbperf\undo_temp.
ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 1
ORA-00376: file 2 cannot be read at this time
ORA-01110: data file 2:
'D:\ORACLE\ORADATA\USBPERF\UNDOTBS01.DBF'
So that’s where we are. I'm guessing that the
original undo tablespace corrupted when it tried to
extend and ran of disk space?
Thanks again for the help.
Colin ok I can guide to solve this but you have to do what I am going to tell you step by step. Is this a production database ?
Joel Pérez
http://www.oracle.com/technology/experts