AskTom

Found the following lines in the alert.log

ORA-00444: background process “EMN0″ failed while starting
ORA-00020: maximum number of processes () exceeded

CAUSE DETERMINATION
====================
The client connections are timing out.

03136, 00000, “inbound connection timed out”
// *Cause: Inbound connection was timed out by the server because
// user authentication was not completed within the given time
// specified by SQLNET.INBOUND_CONNECT_TIMEOUT or its default value

CAUSE JUSTIFICATION
====================
In 10.2 the parameter SQLNET.INBOUND_CONNECT_TIMEOUT has a default value, previous releases it is not set to any default value.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION(S)
======================
Increase the value of the timeout parameters in the sqlnet.ora file for the client connections to complete.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION JUSTIFICATION(S)
====================================
Increasing these values will allow oracle a greater time to complete the connection.

SOLUTION / ACTION PLAN
=======================
Set to a higher value in the server sqlnet.ora and INBOUND_CONNECT_TIMEOUT_listener_name also to a higher value in the listener.ora
Then restart both the listener and database.

Regards,

Tom