Dick/John Thanks for all your input. I conclude from this discussion that it is not possible to have different, seperate external procedure listeners for different SIDs in the same instance at least not in 8.1.7.
Incidentially, I have been having an issue with running an rsh command via an external procedure. The external procedure is a C .so which uses the C system command to run a Unix command. Sometimes the Unix command is an rsh. What I find is that sometimes the rsh command causes the "ORA-28576 lost RPC connection to external procedure agent". However if I make the external procedure listener seperate and start it off as follows from the root crontab or inittab /usr/bin/su - oracle -c /u01/app/oracle/product/8.1.7/bin/lsnrctl start listener_ext Then I never get the error. Just wondered if anyone had any thoughts as to why starting the external procedure listener in this way seems to resolve the ORA-28576 error with rsh commands. John -----Original Message----- Sent: 08 January 2004 15:59 To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L John, I agree if you have multiple databases under the same home all is well, one extproc sid will do. But if you have several different Oracle homes, with different versions of Oracle then each needs it's own extproc sid. Tried using the latest listener and/or extproc combinations, didn't work. Dick Goulet Senior Oracle DBA Oracle Certified 8i DBA -----Original Message----- Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 10:44 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Thanks - I wasn't sure if each session got its own instance of extproc. The SID associated with an EXTPROC is not the same as a SID associated with a database. I have several databases running under the same Oracle Home, and they are sharing the same external procedure listener - which references that Oracle Home. If you are running databases under several versions of Oracle, you may be able to use the listener for the latest version of Oracle you have to listen for all of them, and use its extproc. But it is probably a better idea to run separate listeners for databases and external procedures, each with its own LISTENER.ORA and TNSNAMES.ORA under its own Oracle Home. Just be careful about how the TNS administration directory is set. -----Original Message----- Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 9:54 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L John, On the contrary. You do need to associate an EXTPROC with a particular SID otherwise running different versions of Oracle on the same box blows the EXTPROC to hell. You'll notice that in listener.ora there needs to be a line "SID_NAME=" and in TNSNAMES.ora there is a "Connect_data = (sid = " as well. Now a particular database instance/version can only have one extproc_connect_data entry, but with multiple versions each has it's own, and sure enough each has to have a particular sid otherwise they mess each other up. BTW: Your description of the process is dead on, with one exception. An instance of extproc is connected to one and only one session in the calling database. If two sessions each need to call an external procedure then each gets it's own instance of extproc. Also if you need to update the dll or so file you have to get everyone to let go of extproc, namely by disconnecting from the database. Although it's like a database link, closing the links does not release extproc. Also using TCP to connect to extproc is not an Oracle recommended method, opens a door to hackers. Dick Goulet Senior Oracle DBA Oracle Certified 8i DBA -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: John Flack INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). 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