Executables, 2 of 4

`ctxsrv`

You use the ctxsrv server daemon for background DML processing. You can start it from the command line or with the interMedia Text Manager administration tool.

This server synchronizes the index with ALTER INDEX at regular intervals.

Note:
ctxsrv can only be executed by the Oracle user, CTXSYS.

Syntax

ctxsrv [-user ctxsys/passwd[@sqlnet_address]]
       [-personality M]
       [-logfile log_name]
       [-sqltrace]

-user

Specify the username and password for the Oracle user CTXSYS.

The username and password can be immediately followed by @sqlnet_address to permit logon to remote databases. The value for sqlnet_address is a database connect string. If the TWO_TASK environment variable is set to a remote database, you need not specify a value for sqlnet_address to connect to the database.

Note:
If you do not specify -user in the ctxsrv command-line, you are prompted to enter the required information in the format: CTXSYS/password where password is the password for CTXSYS.
This is useful if you wish to mask the CTXSYS password from other users of the machine on which the server is running.

-personality

Specify the personality mask for the server started by ctxsrv. The only possible value is M and M is the default.

-logfile

Specify the name of a log file to which the server writes all session information and errors.

-sqltrace

Enables the server to write to a trace file in the directory specified by the USER_DUMP_DEST initialization parameter.

See Also:
For more information about SQL trace and the USER_DUMP_DEST initialization parameter, see Oracle8 Administrator's Guide.

Examples

The following example starts a server and writes all server messages to a file named ctx.log:

ctxsrv -user ctxsys/ctxsys -personality M -log ctx.log &

The following example starts a server and writes all server messages to a file named ctx.log. Because -user is not specified, the server prompts you to enter a user:

ctxsrv -log ctx.log

...
Copyright (c) Oracle Corporation 1979, 1998.  All rights reserved.
...
Enter user:

At the prompt, enter CTXSYS/password, where password is the password assigned to the CTXSYS user.

Unix Users:
In this example, the process is not run in the background.
In environments where you can run processes in the background, if you do not specify -user in the ctxsrv command-line, you must run the server process in the foreground or pass a value for -user to ctxsrv from an operating system file.
For example:
ctxsrv -log ctx.log < pword.txt
The file must contain a single line consisting of the following text: CTXSYS/password
If you pass a value to ctxsrv from a file, ctxsrv does not prompt you to enter a user.

Notes

Viewing Pending Updates

Pending index updates are stored in the DML queue. To view this queue, you can use the CTX_PENDING or CTX_USER_PENDING views.

You can also use the interMedia Text Manager administration tool, which is part of the Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Viewing DML Errors

You can view DML errors with the CTX_INDEX_ERRORS or CTX_USER_INDEX_ERRORS views.

Index Fragmentation

Background DML with ctxsrv scans for DML constantly by polling the DML queue. This leads to new additions being indexed automatically and quickly. However, background DML also tends to process documents in smaller batches, which increases index fragmentation.

However, when you synchronize the index manually with ALTER INDEX, the batches are usually larger and thus there is less index fragmentation.

Shutting Down the Server

You can shut down ctxsrv with

CTX_ADM.SHUTDOWN.
The interMedia Text Manager administration tool available with Oracle Enterprise Manager