How to Resolve "No ADR base is set"

No ADR base is set

To manage Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR), we used to use ADRCI command line to interact with server.

Node 1

[oracle@primary01 oracle]$ adrci

ADRCI: Release 19.0.0.0.0 - Production on Thu Jul 31 15:25:45 2021

Copyright (c) 1982, 2019, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

ADR base = "/u01/app/oracle"
adrci>

It seems no problem at all. But for node 2, we found nothing there.

Node 2

[oracle@primary02 oracle]$ adrci

ADRCI: Release 19.0.0.0.0 - Production on Thu Jul 31 15:24:02 2021

Copyright (c) 1982, 2019, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

No ADR base is set
adrci>

No ADR base is set means that ADRCI cannot find the correct location to set ADR base for further operations.

No ADR homes are set

As a result, we have "No ADR homes are set", if we tried to show all ADR homes.

adrci> show homes
No ADR homes are set

Additionally, if you perform some commands on ADR home, you might see DIA-48494: ADR home is not set, the corresponding operation cannot be done.

Rationale

In fact, ADRCI use a pointer file to store the base location of repository. If the file was missing, it cannot find the ADR base.

Let's check existing of the file on node 1 and node 2.

Node 1

grid

[grid@primary01 grid]$ ls -l $ORACLE_HOME/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif
-rw-r-----    1 grid     oinstall         14 Jul 06 14:09 /u01/app/19.0.0/grid/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif

oracle

[oracle@primary01 oracle]$ ls -l $ORACLE_HOME/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif
-rw-r-----    1 oracle   asmadmin         16 Jul 31 15:08 /u01/app/oracle/product/19.0.0/db_1/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif

OK, node 1 has no problem.

Node 2

grid

[grid@primary01 grid]$ ls -l $ORACLE_HOME/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif
-rw-r-----    1 grid     oinstall         14 Apr 22 08:35 /u01/app/19.0.0/grid/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif

oracle

[oracle@primary02 oracle]$ ls -l $ORACLE_HOME/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif
ls: 0653-341 The file /u01/app/oracle/product/19.0.0/db_1/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif does not exist.

For user oracle, the file does not exist in node 2. That's the problem.

Solution

To resolve the error, we take the following steps to set ADR base correctly.

1. Create a folder for the pointer file.

Since there's no such directory on node 2, we have to create one for it.

[oracle@primary02 oracle]$ mkdir -p $ORACLE_HOME/log/diag
2. Make sure $ORACLE_BASE is set correctly.

Normally, we set the environment variable in the user's profile. So we can just check the value like this:

[oracle@primary02 oracle]$ echo $ORACLE_BASE
/u01/app/oracle

Or you may use the command to set it at run-time.

[oracle@primary02 oracle]$ export ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
3. Create the pointer file.

We take the second argument as a string to print into the pointer file.

[oracle@primary02 oracle]$ printf "%s" "$ORACLE_BASE" > $ORACLE_HOME/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif

Please note that, printf does not leave any newline (\n).

4. Make sure the content of the file is correctly set.
[oracle@primary02 oracle]$ cat $ORACLE_HOME/log/diag/adrci_dir.mif
/u01/app/oracle[oracle@primary02 oracle]$

As we expect, there's no newline in the file.

5. Verify the result.

We enter ADRCI interactive mode again.

[oracle@primary02 oracle]$ adrci

ADRCI: Release 19.0.0.0.0 - Production on Thu Jul 31 15:28:38 2021

Copyright (c) 1982, 2019, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

ADR base = "/u01/app/oracle"
adrci>

We have set it correctly.

Later on, we should purge ADR trace files on a regular basis for reclaiming some precious space.