The ARC* files are almost certainly Archived Redo Logs.
You should not delete them as they are needed for certain kinds of recovery operations.
Also, if you are using RMAN for backups it is likely that RMAN will fail if it cannot find the complete series of logs since the last backup.
Be aware that Oracle will stall if the disks get filled up with these logs. You may want to MOVE these logs to another server to free space if the disks start to get full.
RMAN backup scripts can be configured to delete these files after they have been backed up.
Older style backup processes will also delete these files after the database has been backed up.
I'd start looking at how the backups are done, and see if anything is writing logs.
Logging for backup procedures is unfortunately very dependent on the person that wrote the backup scripts, so we can't really help you out to much there.
You should check the general Oracle alter log for anything suspicious though.
Do you have access to the database with SQLPLUS?
If so connect to the database and run the following command
It will show you where Oracle is configured to place its trace files.
SQL> show parameter background_dump_dest
NAME TYPE VALUE
------------------------------------ ----------- ------------------------------
background_dump_dest string D:\oracle\admin\MyDataBase\bdump
There should be a file in this directory called 'alert_DATABASENAME.log'
If you don't have SQLPLUS access to the database just search the machine for 'alert_*.log'
This file should be first place to look for any Oracle weirdness.
You will probably have to beat up on the vendor for a while to get this fixed though.
When will companies learn that 'embedding' Oracle in their products is a bad idea?
Best Answer
First check the addm reports and see what sql did the most block changes. Most likely these are the ones you are looking for. An other reason could be that your database setup changed to force_logging and that your load processes now started logging as a result of this change. If you have no diagnostics pack license, you could use logminer to read the archives and generate the undo transactions for what is in the log. This also gives lots of info. You might want to check the archive log history first to find where you find a changed pattern.