Oracle LSNRCTL – Listener Shutdown and Startup Procedures

Starting up and shutting down the oracle listener is a routine task for a database administrator. However a Linux system administrator or programmer may end-up doing some basic DBA operations on development database. It is critical for non-DBAs to understand the basic database admin activities.

In this article, let us review how to start, stop, check status of an oracle listener using Oracle listener control utility LSNRCTL.

Also refer to our earlier article about how to start and stop the Oracle database

How To Start, Stop and Restart Oracle Listener

1. Display Oracle Listener Status

Before starting, stopping or restarting make sure to execute lsnrctl status command to check the oracle listener status as shown below. Apart from letting us know whether the listener is up or down, you can also find the following valuable information from the lsnrctl status command output.

• Listner Start Date and Time.
• Uptime of listner – How long the listener has been up and running.
• Listener Parameter File – Location of the listener.ora file. Typically located under $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
• Listener Log File – Location of the listener log file. i.e log.xml

If the Oracle listener is not running, you’ll get the following message.

$ lsnrctl status

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on 04-APR-2009 16:27:39

Copyright (c) 1991, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=192.168.1.2)(PORT=1521)))
TNS-12541: TNS:no listener
 TNS-12560: TNS:protocol adapter error
  TNS-00511: No listener
   Linux Error: 111: Connection refused
Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=IPC)(KEY=EXTPROC)))
TNS-12541: TNS:no listener
 TNS-12560: TNS:protocol adapter error
  TNS-00511: No listener
   Linux Error: 2: No such file or directory

If the Oracle listener is running, you’ll get the following message.

$ lsnrctl status

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on 04-APR-2009 16:27:02

Copyright (c) 1991, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=192.168.1.2)(PORT=1521)))
STATUS of the LISTENER
------------------------
Alias                     LISTENER
Version                   TNSLSNR for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production
Start Date                29-APR-2009 18:43:13
Uptime                    6 days 21 hr. 43 min. 49 sec
Trace Level               off
Security                  ON: Local OS Authentication
SNMP                      OFF
Listener Parameter File   /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/network/admin/listener.ora
Listener Log File         /u01/app/oracle/diag/tnslsnr/devdb/listener/alert/log.xml
Listening Endpoints Summary...
  (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=192.168.1.2)(PORT=1521)))
  (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=ipc)(KEY=EXTPROC)))
Services Summary...
Service "devdb" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "devdb", status UNKNOWN, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
Service "devdb.thegeekstuff.com" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "devdb", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
Service "devdbXDB.thegeekstuff.com" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "devdb", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
Service "devdb_XPT.thegeekstuff.com" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "devdb", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
The command completed successfully

2. Start Oracle Listener

If the Oracle listener is not running, start the listener as shown below. This will start all the listeners. If you want to start a specific listener, specify the listener name next to start. i.e lsnrctl start [listener-name]

$ lsnrctl start

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on 04-APR-2009 16:27:42

Copyright (c) 1991, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Starting /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/bin/tnslsnr: please wait...

TNSLSNR for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production
System parameter file is /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/network/admin/listener.ora
Log messages written to /u01/app/oracle/diag/tnslsnr/devdb/listener/alert/log.xml
Listening on: (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=192.168.1.2)(PORT=1521)))
Listening on: (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=ipc)(KEY=EXTPROC)))

Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=192.168.1.2)(PORT=1521)))
STATUS of the LISTENER
------------------------
Alias                     LISTENER
Version                   TNSLSNR for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production
Start Date                04-APR-2009 16:27:42
Uptime                    0 days 0 hr. 0 min. 0 sec
Trace Level               off
Security                  ON: Local OS Authentication
SNMP                      OFF
Listener Parameter File   /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/network/admin/listener.ora
Listener Log File         /u01/app/oracle/diag/tnslsnr/devdb/listener/alert/log.xml
Listening Endpoints Summary...
  (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=192.168.1.2)(PORT=1521)))
  (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=ipc)(KEY=EXTPROC)))
Services Summary...
Service "devdb" has 1 instance(s).
  Instance "devdb", status UNKNOWN, has 1 handler(s) for this service...
The command completed successfully

3. Stop Oracle Listener

If the Oracle listener is running, stop the listener as shown below. This will stop all the listeners. If you want to stop a specific listener, specify the listener name next to stop. i.e lsnrctl stop [listener-name]

$ lsnrctl stop

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on 04-APR-2009 16:27:37

Copyright (c) 1991, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=192.168.1.2)(PORT=1521)))
The command completed successfully

4. Restart Oracle Listener

To restart the listener use lsnrctl reload as shown below instead of lsnrctl stop and lsnrctl start. realod will read the listener.ora file for new setting without stop and start of the Oracle listener.

$ lsnrctl reload

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on 04-APR-2009 17:03:31

Copyright (c) 1991, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=192.168.1.2)(PORT=1521)))
The command completed successfully

Oracle Listener Help

1. View Available Listener Commands

lsnrctl help command will display all available listener commands. In Oracle 11g following are the available listener commands.

• start – Start the Oracle listener
• stop – Stop the Oracle listener
• status – Display the current status of the Oracle listener
• services – Retrieve the listener services information
• version – Display the oracle listener version information
• reload – This will reload the oracle listener SID and parameter files. This is equivalent to lsnrctl stop and lsnrctl start.
• save_config – This will save the current settings to the listener.ora file and also take a backup of the listener.ora file before overwriting it. If there are no changes, it will display the message “No changes to save for LISTENER”
• trace – Enable the tracing at the listener level. The available options are ‘trace OFF’, ‘trace USER’, ‘trace ADMIN’ or ‘trace SUPPORT’
• spawn – Spawns a new with the program with the spawn_alias mentioned in the listener.ora file
• change_password – Set the new password to the oracle listener (or) change the existing listener password.
• show – Display log files and other relevant listener information.

$ lsnrctl help

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on 04-APR-2009 16:12:09

Copyright (c) 1991, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

The following operations are available
An asterisk (*) denotes a modifier or extended command:

start               stop                status
services            version             reload
save_config         trace               spawn
change_password     quit                exit
set*                show*

2. Get More help on Specific Listener Command

You can get detailed help on a specific oracle listener command as shown below. In the following example, it gives all the available arguments/parameters that can be passed to the lsnrctl show command.

$ lsnrctl help show

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on 04-APR-2009 16:22:28

Copyright (c) 1991, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

The following operations are available after show
An asterisk (*) denotes a modifier or extended command:

rawmode                     displaymode
rules                       trc_file
trc_directory               trc_level
log_file                    log_directory
log_status                  current_listener
inbound_connect_timeout     startup_waittime
snmp_visible                save_config_on_stop
dynamic_registration