(1) The DBA sets the ORACLE_SID to ensure the correct database is connected.
(2) Then the DBA access the Server Manager(2) and connects as a sysdba.
(3) The default password is 'manager'. For security purposes, you do not see the user's entry.
The location information for an alert log is stored in the BACKGROUND DUMP DES parameter. In SQL* Plus, issue the SHOW PARAMETER DEST command(5).
The result shows that the location of the log file is in the ORACLE_HOME\RDBMS80\trace folder in the operating system (6)
The default file name is AlertSID.ora
(AlertORCL.ora for this database. In Windows Explorer, you can use Notepad to open the file.
This image shows the beginning of the alert log file recording. If the alert file is not cleared periodically, you many to scroll down the file for quite a ways to find the record that you need. You can locate the information you need using the data and time (7). Here you can see that the database failed to start up due to a file recovery needed error (8), and that the DBA initiated a recovery session (9) The alert log also records an archived log file used at a particular stage of recovery(10). The alert log records that you reset the redo log sequence number when you opened the database(11) and the redo log sequence number is set to 1 (13). The alert log also records the Incomplete recovery method you used (12).