Resolving ORA-19502, ORA-16038 and ORA-27072 Errors in Oracle Database

We recently encountered errors below and there are several common causes.

 ORA-19502: write error on file "/oraarch/TESTDB/1_432678_12436018.dbf", block number 182272 (block size=512)
 ORA-16038: log 2 sequence# 432678 cannot be archived
 ORA-19502: write error on file "", block number (block size=)
 ORA-00312: online log 2 thread 1: '/redo2/TESTDB/TESTDB_1B.rdo'
 ORA-27072: File I/O error

The “ORA-27072: File I/O error” , can occur due to below are common reasons

• Disk issue – This error can also occur if the disk or storage is inaccessible. It might be due to hardware related issues
• File corruption- The file system where database resides might have corrupted.
• Permission issue – If the database user does not have enough permissions, you will get this error.
• Mount failures – when Filesystem not mounted properly

The “ORA-16038” error mainly occurs when archive log file cannot be archived. In this case if the database cannot be able to reuse redo log files, logs cannot switch, the database may hung.

The “ORA-19502” error mainly caused by insufficient disk space or file system full.

In our case, the issue was caused by a full archive log filesystem. 

When archive log file system got full, the redo log archiving failed triggering ORA-16038 and ORA-19502 errors. This eventually resulted ORA-27072 due to failed write attempts

Recommended steps

1. Check the archive log and db_recovery_file_dest destinations

SHOW PARAMETER log_archive_dest;
SHOW PARAMETER db_recovery_file_dest;

If using FRA:

SHOW PARAMETER db_recovery_file_dest_size;

 

2. User should use “df-h” to check the diskspace

User should Pay special attention to:

• Archive destination mount point
• FRA mount point

3. If the file system is full Increase size by extending lun or increasing FRA size.

4. Make sure user run the backup and delete old archive logs

rman target /
DELETE ARCHIVELOG ALL COMPLETED BEFORE 'SYSDATE-x';

Here X means number of days

5. In case FRA is full then user should increase the db_recovery_file_dest_size using below example

Check FRA usage using below query

SELECT name, space_limit/1024/1024 MB_LIMIT,
               space_used/1024/1024 MB_USED,
               space_reclaimable/1024/1024 MB_RECLAIMABLE

FROM   v$recovery_file_dest;  

ALTER SYSTEM SET db_recovery_file_dest_size = 200G;

6. Always check for alert.log to review errors and find the root cause.

Look for:

• ARCn errors
• Log switch failures
• Repeated I/O messages

To Avoid this issue in future user can take below measures:

• Monitor FRA usage regularly
• Set up alerting when disk usage exceeds 80%
• Configure proper RMAN retention policy
• Automate archive log deletion after backup
• Separate archive logs from other mount points
• Monitor log switch frequency

In our environment, the archive log filesystem became completely full.

This caused:
ORA-19502 (write failure)
ORA-16038 (cannot archive log)
ORA-27072 (I/O error)

Once disk space was cleared, archiving resumed automatically and the database returned to normal operation.

Thanks & Regards,

https://oracleracexpert.com