Part 1 : UNIX Commands for Oracle DBAs

These are the common UNIX commands Oracle DBAs would use. I have provided brief explanation of commands and examples. In UNIX, most commands have a lot of options available. For a complete list of options, see the UNIX online manual pages. All UNIX commands and file names are case sensitive. This page is to let you know the commands in UNIX, which might give you a start to learn more about the command using the manual pages or from UNIX books. man man command man ps Manual Pages - Help with any UNIX command Help on the UNIX ps command

clear

clear

To clear the screen

pwd

pwd

Present / Current Working Directory

cd

cd [directoryname]

Change directory, without argument will change your working directory to your home directory. Change working directory to "work" Change working directory to parent directory (.. is parent and . is current directory)

cd work cd ..

ls

ls [-options] [names]

List files. [names] if omitted, will list all files and subdirectories in the directory. Wild cards can be specified. List files with date and permissions -rw-rw-r-- 1 oracle dba 706 Sep 23 17:26 storparms.sql -rwxrwx--- 1 oracle dba 377 Aug 28 15:00 sysdelstat.sql drwxrwxr-- 2 oracle dba 2048 Oct 22 16:12 work [column1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

ls -l

Column1 - Permissions of the file or directory; r-read, wwrite, x-execute Position 1 indicates if it is a directory Positions 2-4 is the permission for owner Positions 5-7 is the permission for group Positions 8-10 is the permission for others Column2 - Owner of the file/directory Column3 - Group which the owner belogs to Column4 - Size of the file in bytes Column5 - Last Modified Date Column6 - Last Modified Time Column7 - Name of the file/directory ls -al List files with date and permissions including hidden files List files with date, sorted in the date modified List files with date, sorted in the date modified, oldest first, with filenames starting with bt

ls -lt ls -ltr bt*

Wildcards

* ? []

Any character, any number of positions Any character, one position A set of characters which match a single character position. To specify a range within [] List all files which contains an x in any position of the name. List all files which start with x List all files which contain T0 followed by 1,2 or 3 followed by ZZ. The following files match this condition:

ls *x*

ls x* ls *T0[1-3]ZZ

analyzeall.AAAT01ZZ dbaoc_err.AAAT03ZZ dbstart_log.AAAT03ZZ calerterr.AAAT01ZZ dbaoc_log.AAAT01ZZ ls job?.sql List files which start with job followed by any single character followed by .sql Example: jobd.sql jobr.sql ls alert*.???[0-1,9] alert_AAAT01ZZ.1019 alert_AAAD00ZZ.1020 alert_AAAI09ZZ.1021

touch -

touch filename

Create a 0 byte file or to change the timestamp of file to current time (wild cards as above can be used with the file names)

mkdir

mkdir directoryname mkdir -p directorypath

Create Directory Create directory down many levels in single pass mkdir -p /home/biju/work/yday/tday

rmdir

rmdir directoryname

Remove directory

rm

rm filename rm -rf directoryname

Remove file Remove directory with files. Important - There is no way to undelete a file or directory in UNIX. So be careful in deleting files and directories. It is always good to have rm -i filename for deletes

cp

cp filename newfilename cp -r * newloc

Copy a file To copy all files and subdirectories to a new location, use -r, the recursive flag.

mv

mv filename newfilename mv filename directoryname

Rename (Move) a file. Rename filename to newfilename. Move filename under directoryname with the same file name. Move filename to directoryname as newfilename. If you use a wildcard in the filename, mv catenates all files to one sigle file, unless the destination is a directory. Use the -i flag with rm, mv and cp to confirm before destroying a file.

mv filename directoryname/newfilename mv * destination

cp -i file1 file2 mv -i file1 file2 rm -i file*

file

file filename

To see what kind of file, whether editable. Executable files are binary and you should not open them. dbshut: ascii text dbsnmp: PA-RISC1.1 shared executable dynamically linked -not stripped dbstart: ascii text dbv: PA-RISC1.1 shared executable dynamically linked -not stripped demobld: commands text demodrop: commands text

file d*

vi

vi filename

Edit a text file. Vi is a very powerful and "difficult to understand" editor. But once you start using, you'll love it! All you want to know about vi are here. More vi tricks later!!

cat

cat filename

See contents of a text file. cat (catenate) will list the whole file contents. Cat is mostly used to catenate two or more files to one file using the redirection operator.

cat file1 file2 file3 > files Catenate the contents of file1, file2 and file3 to a

single file called files. If you do not use the redirection, the result will be shown on the standard output, i.e., screen.

more page

more filename page filename

Show the contents of the file, one page at a time. In more/page, use space to see next page and ENTER to see next line. If you wish to edit the file (using vi), press v; to quit press q.

tail

tail -n filename

To see the specified number of lines from the end of the file.

head

head -n filename

To see the specified number of lines from the top of the file.

pg

pg filename

To show the contents of the file, page by page. In pg, you go up and down the pages with + and - and numbers. 1 First Page of the file $ Last Page of the file +5 Skip 5 pages -6 Go back 6 pages ENTER Next page - Previous Page q Quit /string Search for string

env

env To set an environment variable:

To see value of all environment variables. In ksh or sh "export VARIABLENAME=value", Note there is no space between =. In csh "setenv VARIABLENAME value" See value of an environment variable

echo $VARIABLENAME

echo

echo string echo "Oracle SID is $ORACLE_SID"

To print the string to standard output Will display "Oracle SID is ORCL" if the value of ORACLE_SID is ORCL.

lp

lp filename

To print a file to system default printer.

chmod

chmod permission filename

Change the permissions on a file - As explained under ls -l, the permissions are read, write, execute for owner, group and others. You can change permissions by using numbers or the characters r,w,x. Basically, you arrive at numbers using the binary format. Examples: rwx = 111 rw_ = 110 r__ = 100 r_x = 101

= = = =

7 6 4 5

chmod +rwx filename chmod 777 filename chmod u+rwx,g+rx,o-rwx filename chmod 750 filename

Give all permissions to everyone on filename Read, write, execute for owner, read and execute for group and no permission for others

chown

chown newuser filename

Change owner of a file

chgrp

chgrp newgroup filename chown newuser:newgroup filename

Change group of a file Change owner and group of file

compress

compress filename

Compress a file - compressed files have extention .Z. To compress file you need to have enough space to hold the temporary file.

uncompress

uncompress filename

Uncompress a file

df

df [options] [moutpoint]

Freespace available on the system (Disk Free); without arguments will list all the mount points. Freespace available on /ora0 in Kilobytes. On HP-UX, you can use "bdf /ora0". If you're not sure of the mount point name, go to the directory where you want to see the freespace and issue this command, where "." indicates current directory.

df -k /ora0

df -k .

du

du [-s] [directoryname]

Disk used; gives operating system blocks used by each subdirectory. To convert to KB, for 512K OS blocks, divide the number by 2. gives the summary, no listing for subdirectories

du -s

find

Find files.

find is a very useful command, searches recursively through the directory tree looking for files that match a logical expression. It has may options and is very powerful.

find /ora0/admin -name "*log" Simple use of find - to list -print all files whose name end in log under /ora0/admin and its subdirectories find . -name "*log" -print -exec rm {} \; to delete files whose name end in log. If you do not use the "-print" flag, the file names will not be listed on the screen.

grep

Global regular expression print

to search for an expression in a file or group of files. grep has two flavours egrep (extented - expands wild card characters in the expression) and frep (fixed-string - does

not expand wild card characters). This is a very useful command, especially to use in scripts. grep oracle /etc/passwd to display the lines containing "oracle" from /etc/passwd file. to display only the file names (-l option) which contains the string EMP_TAB, ignore case for the string (i option), in all files with sql extention. display only the lines in /etc/oratab where the lines do not (-v option; negation) start with # character (^ is a special character indicating beginning of line, similarly $ is end of line).

grep -i -l EMP_TAB *.sql

grep -v '^#' /etc/oratab

ftp

ftp [hostname]

File Transfer Protocol - to copy file from one computer to another invoke ftp, connect to server AAAd01hp.

ftp AAAd01hp

Connected to AAAd01hp.com. program prompts for user 220 AAAd01hp.com FTP server name, enter the login name to (Version 1.1.214.2 Mon May 11 AAAd01hp. 12:21:14 GMT 1998) ready. Name (AAAd01hp:oracle): BIJU 331 Password required for BIJU. Password: enter password - will not be echoed.

230 User BIJU logged in. Specifying to use ASCII mode Remote system type is UNIX. to transfer files. This is Using binary mode to transfer used to transfer text files. files. ftp> ascii 200 Type set to A. ftp> binary Specifying to use binary mode to transfer files. This is used for program and your export dump files. To see the files in the remote computer. transfer the file check.sql from the remote computer to the local computer. The file

200 Type set to I. ftp> ls 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /usr/bin/ls.

total 8 -rw-rw-rw- 1 b2t dba 43 Sep 22 16:01 afiedt.buf drwxrwxrwx 2 b2t dba 96 Jul 9 08:47 app drwxrwxrwx 2 b2t dba 96 Jul 9 08:49 bin -rw-rw-rw- 1 b2t dba 187 Jul 30 14:44 check.sql 226 Transfer complete. ftp> get check.sql

will be copied to the present directory with the same name. You can optionally specify a new name and directory location.

200 PORT command successful. ! runs commands on the local 150 Opening BINARY mode data machine. connection for check.sql (187 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. 187 bytes received in 0.02 seconds (7.79 Kbytes/s) ftp> !ls AAAP02SN a4m08.txt tom3.txt a4m01.txt ftp> put a4m01.txt /tmp/test.txt transfer file from local machine to remote machine, under /tmp directory with name test.txt.

mail

mail "xyz@abc.com" < message.log

Mail a file to internet/intranet address. mail the contents of message.log file to xyz@abc.com

mail -s "Messages from Me" mail the contents of "xyz@abc.com" "abc@xyz.com" < message.log to xyz and abc message.log with a subject.

who

who [options] who -T who -r

to see who is logged in to the computer. Shows the IP address of each connection Shows when the computer was last rebooted, run-level.

ps

ps

process status - to list the process id, parent process, status etc. ps without any arguments will list current sessions processes. ull listing of my processes, with time, terminal id, parent id, etc.

ps -f

ps -ef

as above for all the processes on the server.

kill

kill [-flag] processid

to kill a process - process id is obtained from the ps command or using the v$process table in oracle. Kill the process with id 12345 To force termination of process id 12345

kill 12345 kill -9 12345

script

script logfilename

to record all your commands and output to a file. Mostly useful if you want to log what you did, and sent to customer support for them to debug. start logging to the logfilename. The logging is stopped when you do "exit".

hostname

hostname

displays the name of the computer.

uname

uname -a

to see the name of the computer along with Operating system version and license info.

date

date date "+%m%d%Y"

displays the current date and time. displays date in MM/DD/YYYY format

cal

cal cal 01 1991

displays calender of current month Displays January 1991 Calender

telnet

telnet [hostname]

to open a connection to another computer in the network. Provide the alias name or IP address of the computer.

&

command & nohup command &

add & to the end of the command to run in background no hangup - do not terminate the background job even if the shell terminates.

fg

fg

to bring a background job to foreground

bg

bg

to take a job to the background. Before issuing this command, press ^Z, to suspend the process and then use bg, to put it in the background.

jobs

jobs

to list the current jobs in the shell.

rcp

rcp [-r] sourcehost:filename destinationhost:filename

Remote copy. Copy files from one coputer to another. To set up the computer for remote copy and remote login (rlogin) will be discussed later. Copy file from host1 to host2. If the computer name is omitted, the hostname is assumed.

rcp host1:/ora0/file1.txt host2:/ora0/temp/file1.txt

Part 2 - Using UNIX Commands To see errors from Alert log file cd alertlogdirectory; grep ORA- alertSID.log To see the name of a user from his unix id (Provided your UNIX admin keeps them!) grep userid /etc/passwd

To see if port number 1521 is reserved for Oracle grep 1521 /etc/services To see the latest 20 lines in the Alert log file: tail -20 alertSID.log To see the first 20 lines in the Alert log file: head -20 alertSID.log To find a file named "whereare.you" under all sub-directories of /usr/oracle find /usr/oracle -name whereare.you -print To remove all the files under /usr/oracle which end with .tmp find /usr/oracle -name "*.tmp" -print -exec rm -f {} \; To list all files under /usr/oracle which are older than a week. find /usr/oracle -mtime +7 -print To list all files under /usr/oracle which are modified within a week. find /usr/oracle -mtime -7 -print To compress all files which end with .dmp and are more than 1 MB. find /usr/oracle -size +1048576c -name "*.dmp" -print -exec compress {} \; To see the shared memory segment sizes ipcs -mb To see the space used and available on /oracle mount point

df -k /oracle To see the users logged in to the server and their IP address who -T To change passwd of oracle user passwd oracle To convert the contents of a text file to UPPERCASE tr "[a-z]" "[A-Z]" < filename > newfilename To convert the contents of a text file to lowercase. tr "[A-Z]" "[a-z]" < filename > newfilename To kill a process from Unix. kill unixid OR kill -9 unixid To see the oracle processes ps -ef | grep SIDNAME To see the number of lines in a text file (can be used to find the number of records while loading data from text file). wc -l filename To change all occurrences of SCOTT with TIGER in a file sed 's/SCOTT/TIGER/g' filename > newfilename To see lines 100 to 120 of a file head -120 filename | tail -20 To truncate a file (for example listener.log file)

rm filename; touch filename To see if SQL*Net connection is OK. tnsping SIDNAME To see if the server is up. ping servername OR ping IPADDRESS To see the versions of all Oracle products installed on the server. $ORACLE_HOME/orainst/inspdver