Using UNIX aliases with Oracle

A UNIX alias is a short command that is replaced with a larger command to save typing time. For example, we could create an alias to allow us to count the number of connected users on our oracle server:

root> alias numuse=’who|wc –l’

root> numuse

463

The whole point of UNIX aliases is to save typing. Here is a list on common UNIX aliases that can be added to your UNIX logon file for the UNIX Oracle user. These aliases perform common Oracle functions such as checking the Oracle alert log and transferring quickly between directories.

#*******************************
# UNIX aliases for Oracle DBAs
#*******************************
alias alert='tail -100 $DBA/$ORACLE_SID/bdump/alert_$ORACLE_SID.log|more'
alias errors='tail -100 $DBA/$ORACLE_SID/bdump/alert_$ORACLE_SID.log|more'
alias arch='cd $DBA/$ORACLE_SID/arch'
alias bdump='cd $DBA/$ORACLE_SID/bdump'
alias cdump='cd $DBA/$ORACLE_SID/cdump'
alias pfile='cd $DBA/$ORACLE_SID/pfile'
alias rm='rm -i'
alias sid='env|grep ORACLE_SID'
alias admin='cd $DBA/admin'

To illustrate how useful aliases are in Oracle administration, in the example below we can get to our pfile directory in a single command so we can view the contents of our init.ora file:

cheops*CPRO-/home/oracle
> pfile
cheops*CPRO-/u01/app/oracle/CPRO/pfile
>ls
initCPRO.ora

Aliases can also be used for sophisticated Oracle commands. For example, the following alias can be used to display all Oracle errors in the last 400 lines of the alert log:

cheops*testsid-/u01/app/oracle/admin/envtest/pfile
>alias errors='tail -100 $DBA/$ORACLE_SID/bdump/alert_$ORACLE_SID.log|grep ORA-'

cheops*testsid-/u01/app/oracle/admin/envtest/pfile
>errors
ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 1
ORA-01089: immediate shutdown in progress - no operations are permitted
ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 3
ORA-01089: immediate shutdown in progress - no operations are permitted