Oracle Alert Log Location

What is the alert log?

This log is there to alert you to major events in the database like:

• When the database was started and stopped.
• When the database was stopped. 
• When a log switch occurs. 
• You can see many other things. 

So the DBA should check the contents of the alert log on a regular basis. 

Alert log Location

The alert log is stored in the directory pointed to by the background dump destination and specified by the background_dump_dest initialization parameter, You can display the location of the alert log directory with SQLPlus or OS commands:

SQL Plus

1. SQL> show parameter background;
2. SQL> select value from v$parameter where name='background_dump_dest';

OS

• UNIX
• find / -name alert*.log 2>/dev/null
• Windows
• dir /s alert*.log