alter database add logfile size 1e7;

I am in the processing in adding logfiles to a 10gR2 database.

SQL> alter database add logfile group 10 size 1e7;

Database altered.
$ ls -l
-rw-r----- 1 oracle 10000896 Nov 1 15:00
o1_mf_10_3lmq05ld_.log

The file size is 10,000,896 bytes.

What about this :

SQL> alter database drop logfile group 10;

Database altered.
SQL> alter database add logfile size 1e;
alter database add logfile size 1e
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00741: logfile size of (2251799813685248) blocks
exceeds maximum logfile size

No way! Oracle does not want me to add a logfile of 1 Exabyte !

Remember the logfile blocks are OS blocks of 512 bytes. Not Oracle blocks.

Ok, let’s try something else

SQL> alter database add logfile size 1p;
alter database add logfile size 1p
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00741: logfile size of (2199023255552) blocks
exceeds maximum logfile size

No, one Petabyte is not a realistic size for a log file.

I have one more try, but unfortunately it works :evil:

SQL> alter database add logfile size 1t;

...

It just takes ages…

$ ls -l
-rw-r----- 1 oracle dba 1099511628288 Nov 1 14:49
o1_mf_5_3lmpb6w6_.log
$ du -g o1_mf_5_3lmpb6w6_.log
6.09 o1_mf_5_3lmpb6w6_.log
$ df -gt .
Filesystem GB blocks Used Free %Used Mounted on
/dev/u02_lv 140.00 19.32 120.68 14% /u02

The ls shows the file size has been set to 1T and 6 Gigabytes have been allocated yet. Since I do not want to fill my filesystem, I just shutdown-abort my instance and remove that file…