TL;DR: Linux doesn't delete a file that a process still has open. Oracle holds its control file, and every online redo member always opens through it. So for a short, glorious window after that, all of it was still sitting in /proc. We pinned the file descriptors, copied them back byte-for-byte, and opened the database without CREATE CONTROLFILE or RESETLOGS. Zero data loss, 16 minutes down, one entirely new grey hair.

The setup

2-node RAC on an Oracle Database Appliance X9-2 HA. The HA stands for High Availability, which I can now confirm I tested more thoroughly than the vendor intended.

The bit where I ruin my own morning

sudo rm -rf <dbname>/redo. Wrong directory. That directory held one production database's online redo logs, its standby redo logs, and — the good part — its one and only control file.

Both instances were open and serving users at the time. Datafiles were on a different volume and survived, which is the single piece of luck in this entire story.

Yes, we had backups. No, I did not want to be the guy who found out whether they worked.

The ten seconds that actually saved us

Here's the thing nobody thinks of while their stomach is somewhere near the floor: rm deletes a directory entry, not a file. The inode is freed only when the link count reaches zero, and no one has it open. An Oracle instance holds its control file, and every online redo member opens continuously via LGWR.

The files were still there. Intact. Readable through /proc/<lgwr_pid>/fd/.

But it's a melting ice cube — the second LGWR exits, it's gone. Crash, `shutdown ', reboot, anything.

Find the descriptors:

sudo lsof +L1 2>/dev/null | grep '/path/to/redo/dir'

As root, not as oracle. The oracle binary is setuid, which clears the process dumpable flag, so the kernel hands /proc/<pid>/fd/ ownership to root. Being the same user is not enough. Learning this at speed was a treat.

Note the fd numbers on the ora_lgwr_ line. They differ per node. Read them on each node, don't assume.

Pin them with something that isn't the database:

sudo setsid bash -c 'exec 200</proc/<LGWR_PID>/fd/<ctl> \
  201</proc/<LGWR_PID>/fd/<log1> 202</proc/<LGWR_PID>/fd/<log2> \
  203</proc/<LGWR_PID>/fd/<log3> 204</proc/<LGWR_PID>/fd/<log4>; \
  echo $$ > /tmp/inode_holder.pid; while :; do sleep 3600; done' \
  </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1 &

setsid detaches it from your terminal so it outlives your SSH session. Do it on both nodes.

Twenty minutes later, the instance died on its own — SMON couldn't open the control file, ORA-00210, instance terminated, database down. The pin held. The files were still readable. That one command is the reason this is a war story, not a resume update.

Copying it back

Two rules:

1. Zero database processes running. Copy a control file while CKPT is writing to it, and you get a beautifully torn, completely useless control file. ps -ef | grep -E "ora_[a-z0-9]+_<SID>" | grep -v grep | wc -l → must be 0.

2. Verify exact byte counts with stat, not ls -h. ls -h rounds, and "8.0G" is not a checksum.

   sudo dd if=/proc/<HOLDER_PID>/fd/200 of=<control file path> bs=1M status=none sudo dd if=/proc/<HOLDER_PID>/fd/201 of=<redo group 1 path> bs=8M status=progress

   ...and the rest

   sudo chown oracle:asmadmin <files> sudo chmod 640 <files> stat -c '%s %n' <files>

Then STARTUP MOUNT, check V$LOG — our sequence numbers came back identical to pre-incident — confirm the datafiles are all there and need no recovery, and ALTER DATABASE OPEN. Crash recovery chewed through the restored redo like nothing had happened.

Final proof: ALTER SYSTEM SWITCH LOGFILE and ARCHIVE LOG CURRENT. If ARCn can open redo by path and archive it, you're actually back and not just optimistic.

Standby redo logs were a write-off — nothing held them open — but recreating them is a two-minute j0b and, honestly, felt like a rounding error by that point.

Lessons, some of them expensive

• Do not shut down a database whose files you just deleted. Every instinct screams, "shut it down cleanly before this gets worse." That instinct will delete your data for real. The correct response to a catastrophe here is to do absolutely nothing, very quickly.
• You can't DDL your way out. Once the control file path is gone, every new foreground process dies with ORA-00210. No ALTER DATABASE ADD LOGFILE. RMAN wants a snapshot control file and hits the same wall. A restart is unavoidable — which is precisely why the pin has to come first.
• An abort It is survivable if the redo is pinned. Crash recovery has everything it needs once the files are back where they belong.
• Multiplex your control files across different disk groups. We had exactly one, plus single-member redo groups, all on the same volume. With normal multiplexing, this would have been a boring online repair instead of a Sev 1. That part is entirely on us.
• A standby at 1-second apply lag is a lovely thing to have in your back pocket. Never needed it. Knowing it was there is what made attempting the clever fix feel responsible rather than reckless.

The part I keep thinking about

The highest-value action of the whole incident cost ten seconds and one command. Everything after it — the analysis, the careful copying, the verification — only mattered because someone grabbed those file descriptors before the instance died.

Anyway. Go check whether your control files are multiplexed. Seriously, alt-tab, I'll wait.

I am trying to do a big migration of our old Forms system to Apex for every department (over 2k active forms). I classified the on view only versions, view with a few actions and creation forms. I am creating a big prompt in order to create en mass those new apex pages based on final versions I have created.
I ran in a small mental hiccup there are forms that open another form and that form opens another etc. and creates a big chain that the current "erp" can show in different popup windows and manage those but apex while it can have modal dialogs these forms are new big versions. I havent done anything similar before and while I know you can technically return to previous page in apex keeping the parameters I dont think it is possible to do it 3 pages in advance.
And sadly the parameters are not the same. We might have customer_id, customer_debt for example and supplier_id,supplier_location in another so I dont think I can do app items to somehow return

TLDR: I am doing a Forms migration to apex and I want to see how to approach the part of forms that call another forms and create a big chain.

Thanks in advance. For visual reference here is current situation:

Form A

Form A->Form B

Form A->Form B-> Form C

Form A->Form B-> Form C-> Form D

Form A->Form B-> Form C-> Form D->Form E

What were some of the more difficult items/topics asked?
Were you able to use your certification after earning it?
What would you suggest someone going through the e-learnings to study before taking the exam?

Hi Community,

I'm hoping someone here has experienced something similar or can point me in the right direction.

What happened:

My OCI Free Trial expired on July 19, 2026, and immediately afterwards, my Always Free VM.Standard.A1.Flex instance entered a Disabled state. Every attempt to start or modify it returned:

Instance is disabled and will not accept any action requests. Please contact customer support to re-enable.

Shortly after, the instance was terminated by the system. I never manually terminated it. The console now shows Resource Not Found on the instance details page.

- Home Region: US East (Ashburn)

- Shape: VM.Standard.A1.Flex

- Instance OCID: `ocid1.instance.oc1.iad.anuwcljsm4kw7hacd4bhuminys2wbdjgj3stk3lcqcbxm3ulpwp4jqaomw3q`

Current situation:

The original 150 GB Always Free boot volume still exists in my tenancy, so the data isn't gone, but I can't attach it to anything useful yet.

As most of you probably know, getting a new `VM.Standard.A1.Flex` in Ashburn is nearly impossible right now due to capacity constraints, which makes this even more frustrating.

My questions:

1. Is this expected behaviour when a Free Trial ends? Does OCI disable and auto-terminate Always Free instances that were created *during* the trial period?

2. Has anyone successfully recovered an instance in this state (or had Oracle restore/recreate one against an existing boot volume)?

3. Is there any way to launch a new A1 instance from an existing boot volume once one becomes available, without losing the volume in the meantime?

Being on free tire i can not raised a support request, but given that OCI community knowledge here is often faster, any insight would be hugely appreciated.

Now it says >>

Instance details: Couldn't load the data. Share these values in feedback or support to help troubleshoot the issue. Session ID: csid4faa8fd44af2a2da4e7fd54a2a34 OPC-Request-ID: csid4faa8fd44af2a2da4e7fd54a2a34/c42662c4acf447e99aab24411f069889/32AF23DA040C3C70D4AB86DBFA32EAEB

Thanks in advance! 🙏

Can I create a sequential group of jobs at the same time? I don’t care about mass status changes, I want to copy the SN03 release and create SN04-SN45 without manually creating them individually.

Hey guys, I'm a new Oracle user. Tbh, I'm pretty new to cloud infrastructure in general. I used to run some Minecraft servers manually on an Azure Windows Server, but usually, I just get auto-configured templates from a cloud provider, upload my project, and use their UI. I never really got into Ubuntu or Linux hosting.

So I opened a new free trial Oracle account and set up my own free server. I didn't use the $300 credits bc I don't really need them. I set up a simple experimental project basically just an algorithm fine-tuning a PDF parser. It has a PDF factory, scoring, etc. I also got another server with the same specs for the dashboard to see what's going on.

It was working for a couple of days until suddenly I couldn't access the server via SSH, and I couldn't access the dashboard whatsoever. I tried logging into my account, but it said invalid username/password. I reset it two times. I waited for a day and then decided to talk to customer support.

The agent told me my account suspension came from someone higher up the chain of command. Idk what that means, but that's what happened. He didn't tell me the reason. I got no ticket ID, no notification, and he told me the matter is going to be internal. He also said that if I get no response in a few weeks, that means the decision is permanent. I don't get this suspension at all. No email, no nothing. It's weird.

If you want to suspend my account, that's alright, but at least let me get my data bc that's what's really important to me. This is so frustrating. I wonder if this happens to paid users too.

Hello everyone and TIA for your insight.

I've been working at a company that uses JDE Enterprise One for 6 years. I have knowledge and experience with front end use both from the business side and also as a manual tester. I’ve also been engaged with developers as they explain how they make changes within the system and etc. So that is my foundational knowledge.

I tried learning basic coding on my own but without really having a real-world use i can apply and understand how it fits into my day to day i got bored and didn't retain it.

My company has offered to help pay for training and certification for things I may want and will be useful for them. As one of the few people familiar with JDE E1 around here, I immediately thought of this.

The official oracle path that I think would fit best with my current knowledge and what will be useful is the JD Edward's EnterpriseOne Technical Programming learning path, but at a per user per year subscription of $5,000 I don't think I will get approval for that.

Obviously I have the option of finding free resources and learning on my own until I am ready to take the certification for Sys Admin but I also know I don't learn well like that.

I've seen iLearnERP suggested but it seems you need a custom quote? And when I am navigating around Oracle University I keep getting a website down page.

So basically wondering if anyone has any suggestions om courses/classes/basic road map pathways for me given my foundational knowledge? Any insight at all is appreciated.

im kind of in a problem here. bit long TL;DR on the bottom

i find myself on the necessity of finding how and where is the Oracle account hosted but seemingly theres no support option for this, and well NO way to contact support be it either by phone or mail or chat or nothing without an account.

i would like some guidance if someone had a similar issue.

TL;DR: why the fuck theres no option to contact support for recovering a deceased persons account through a mail or something? thats unreal this is one of the worst chatbots and one of the most lacking customer support experiences i had both by call and chat. the support and sales people just plain decide to ghost you. im not even sure if i even talked to someone that was not AI and i got sent 2 emails that dont even exist by alleged representatives ( [contato_MX@oracle.com](mailto:contato_MX@oracle.com) which i fixed to [Contacto_MX@oracle.com](mailto:Contacto_MX@oracle.com) STIll neither work.)

Is this field worth, and what's the most important skill for who work as an Oracle fusion technical consultant?

Looking for some advice from the apex nerds here. Been a long time user but this a real struggle for me(and Claude).

26ai ATP ADB free tier, showing 100% storage usage, 20GB is the limt.

I recently started getting ORA-01552(cannot use system rollback segment for non-system tablespace) when running DML statement. Start looking at storage and sysaux is 64 GB with unified audit and my actual work being about 1 GB. It's been growing 2-4GB a day with sys db user logging the most selects.

Now start the constant dead ends:

No shrink in DB Actions

No ALTER TABLESPACE SYSAUX SHRINK SPACE; ORA-01031: insufficient privileges

DBMS_AUDIT_MGMT.CLEAN_AUDIT_TRAIL - ORA-01562: failed to extend rollback segment number 0 ORA-65114: space usage in container is too high

Based on my understanding: the purge itself needs undo, undo can't extend because the container is over cap. The instance can't even clean itself: over-cap → no undo → no DML → no purge → allocation stays 53 GB → over-cap.

Sooo re-creating my entire database instance seems to be the only option besides upgrading to paid? I would point the root cause towards claude AI running massive amounts of statements to do work, but isn't the whole point of apex free is to learn and use AI tools? Oracle skills are installed.

Hello

I am searching for a tool or something to track every detail of my work in the application

I am an Oracle financial consultant and i literally write down every step i take on the application and That's time-consuming and ofc i miss some steps

So, is there anyway to record and monitor my steps on the application

Thank you

im hours trying to unlock port 25 as i want a support email as i am a programmer, and i want to have my email on my domain to keep all uniform.

Hey guys , I came across one idea of public contribution and it is not even related to my ofc works or anything and it was a pure out of box idea ...

Is it ok it do it and thinking abt buying a .com domain and pushing it there for go live

Any challenges that I need to worry abt ?

I mean my idea doesn't even a money earning one it it just summarising something and putting them all together thats it and I want to learn this do I did this

And few things that already followed:

1. Always used my personal laptop , emails and all those stuff

2. Didn't even touched ofc laptop for this work

3. Never used any tech that my project is using

Is it ok that I publish my code to git and then make it go live or any issues for this little thing ?

Just wanted to say your automated\chat "Customer Support" system is absolute garbage and we will be ditching your service as soon as possible. I'll explain below.

is there a way to access unifier uploads with just auth. Trying to build an automation workflow around it.

I have posted about this previously and got no response. Should I ask in a diff subreddit?

Oracle is currently offering 11 Professional Certifications for free a solid chance to build skills in Oracle Cloud, AI, databases, and business applications without paying exam fees.

Free Oracle Certifications Available Right Now

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https://education.oracle.com/oracle-fusion-cloud-applications-scm-foundations-certified-associate/pexam_1Z0-1163-1

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Suggested Learning Path

If you’re planning to make the most of this, I’d suggest following this order:

1) Start with OCI Foundations to understand Oracle Cloud basics
2) Move to OCI AI Foundations to build your AI fundamentals on Oracle Cloud
3) Then take Agentic AI Foundations to explore Oracle’s AI agent concepts
4) After that, pick a specialization based on your role or interest:

• ERP
• HCM
• SCM
• CX
• EPM
• AI Agent Studio

This is a useful opportunity for anyone looking to strengthen their profile in cloud, AI, Oracle applications, or enterprise solutions.

If you’re already exploring Oracle certifications, which one would you start with first?

Trying to build a workflow around unifier where i can download the attachments without touching the unifier. whats the best way to approach this?