Primary Note: Troubleshooting steps for ORA-03113 Error (Doc ID 1506805.1)

Last updated on SEPTEMBER 04, 2023

Applies to:

Oracle Database - Enterprise Edition - Version 9.2.0.1 and later
Oracle Net Services - Version 12.1.0.2 and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Purpose

An ORA-3113 "end of file on communication channel" error is a general error usually reported by a client process connected to an Oracle database. The error basically means 'I cannot communicate with the Oracle shadow process'. As it is such a general error more information must be collected to help determine what has happened - this error by itself does not indicate the cause of the problem. For example, ORA-3113 could be signaled for any of these following scenarios:

Server machine crashed
Your server process was killed at the O/S level
Network problems
Oracle internal errors (ORA-600 / ORA-7445) / aborts on the server
Client incorrectly handling multiple connections
etc.. etc.. etc.. - a lot of possible causes !!

This article describes what information to collect for an ORA-3113 error. It is common for this error to be accompanied by other errors such as:

ORA-1041 internal error. hostdef extension doesn't exist
ORA-3114 not connected to ORACLE (This error is reported before the ORA-3113 when PL/SQL is used)
ORA-1012 not logged on

These are all symptomatic of being disconnected from Oracle.

NOTE:
This note is an updated version of archived
<Note 17613.1> - ORA-03113 on Unix - What Information to Collect
For older information, please refer to <Note 17613.1>