ORA-03113: end-of-file on communication channel af

Question

I've got a load-balanced (not using Session state) ASP.Net 2.0 app on IIS5 running back to a single Oracle 10g server, using version 10.1.0.301 of the ODAC/ODP.Net drivers. After a long period of inactivity (a few hours), the application, seemingly randomly, will throw an Oracle exception:

Exception: ORA-03113: end-of-file on communication channel at Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleException.HandleErrorHelper(Int32 errCode, OracleConnection conn, IntPtr opsErrCtx, OpoSqlValCtx* pOpoSqlValCtx, Object src, String procedure) at Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleCommand.ExecuteReader(Boolean requery, Boolean fillRequest, CommandBehavior behavior) at Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleCommand.System.Data.IDbCommand.ExecuteReader()

...Oracle portion of the stack ends here...

We are creating new connections on every request, have the open & close wrapped in a try/catch/finally to ensure proper connection closure, and the whole thing is wrapped in a using (OracleConnection yadayada) {...} block. This problem does not appear linked to the restart of the ASP.Net application after being spun down for inactivity.

We have yet to reproduce the problem ourselves. Thoughts, prayers, help?

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More: Checked with IT, the firewall isn't set to kill connections between those servers.

Answer 1

You could try this registry hack:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
"DeadGWDetectDefault"=dword:00000001
"KeepAliveTime"=dword:00120000

If it works, just keep increasing the KeepAliveTime. It is currently set for 2 minutes.