ORA-00257 archiver error

There are a several archived log errors that exist, and there are several different reasons for these errors as well. As we know that redo log groups are used in a circular fashion and redo logs are reused again and again. After every log switch, the previous redo log file is archived (if database is running in archivelog mode). If oracle is not able to create an archived log file after a redo log switch ORA-00257 would appear, and after a few more redo log switches the turn of this redo log file would come again. Since oracle was not able to archived this redo log previously, it will not overwrite this redo log and database would hang. This redo log must be archived before it could be reused. Alert log would who errors as follows if it is not able to create an archived log file

Fri May 19 12:10:13 2017 Unable to create archive log file '+ARCH' ARC3: Error 19504 Creating archive log file to '+ARCH' ARCH: Archival stopped, error occurred. Will continue retrying ORACLE Instance MYDB - Archival Error ORA-16038: log 6 sequence# 90895 cannot be archived ORA-19504: failed to create file "" ORA-00312: online log 6 thread 1: '+REDO1/mydb/onlinelog/group_6.261.860506153' ORA-00312: online log 6 thread 1: '+REDO2/mydb/onlinelog/group_6.261.860506155'

ORA-19809: limit exceeded for recovery files, and ORA19804

In some cased, following error could appear in the alert log file if archived log destination is set to use fast recovery area and size limit set using db_recovery_file_dest_size has reached.

ORA-19809: limit exceeded for recovery files ORA-19804: cannot reclaim 43888640 bytes disk space from 314572800 limit ARC0: Error 19809 Creating archive log file to 'C:\APP\ORACLE\FAST_RECOVERY_AREA\SALMAN12C\ARCHIVELOG\2017_05_23\O1_MF_1_982_%U_.ARC' Tue May 23 15:56:02 2017 Errors in file C:\APP\ORACLE\diag\rdbms\salman12c\salman12c\trace\salman12c_arc3_20148.trc: ORA-19815: WARNING: db_recovery_file_dest_size of 314572800 bytes is 100.00% used, and has 0 remaining bytes available. Tue May 23 15:56:02 2017

• If you face archiver error, you may consider following points relevant in order to investigate the issue.
• Make sure you have properly set your log_archive_dest_n parameter and the directory specified in this parameter exists and “oracle” user has read and write privileges on this directory.
• There is sufficient amount of space available on the file system where log archive destination is specified.
• If you are using fast recovery area by setting db_recovery_file_dest, make sure that parameter db_recovery_file_dest_size parameter has a value large enough to store archived logs being generated by the database.
• If you have shortage of space for archive destination, backup your archived log more frequently (using RMAN preferably) and delete old archived log files to make space for more incoming archived log files.
• If archive destination is on ASM, it is better to provide diskgroup name under log_archive_dest_n (for example ‘+ARCH’). If you provide a directory path like ‘+ARCH\mydest\archive’, then you must make sure that you create this directory manually on the ASM diskgroup.