COMMAND

    TNSLSNR (Oracle 8)

SYSTEMS AFFECTED

    Systems running Oracle 8

PROBLEM

    Jason Ackley found  following.  While  attempting to see  what the
    server sends as a banner (if  any), he telnet'ed to port 1521  and
    tried things like:   help version quit.   All to no avail.   So he
    broke  his  telnet  and  resumed  various other things and noticed
    that  the  tnslsnr  had  shot  up  to %99 CPU utilization, and was
    staying there.   This was  tested on  Sequent Dynix  too and  sure
    enough it runs the process out of control.  This before was on:

    LSNRCTL> version
    Connecting to (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=IPC)(KEY=ORCL))
    TNSLSNR for Linux: Version 8.0.5.0.0 - Production
            TNS for Linux: Version 8.0.5.0.0 - Production
            Unix Domain Socket IPC NT Protocol Adaptor for Linux: Version
            8.0.5.0.0 - Production
            Oracle Bequeath NT Protocol Adapter for Linux: Version 8.0.5.0.0 - Production
            TCP/IP NT Protocol Adapter for Linux: Version 8.0.5.0.0 - Production

    Here are the systems reported affected:

        Oracle 8.0.5 Production under Windows NT, HP-UX and Linux
        Oracle 8.0.5 on Solaris 2.6 port 1526
        Oracle 8.0.4.2.1 under AIX 4.3
        Oracle 8.0.4 Production under Solaris
        Oracle 8.0.3 on Solaris 2.6 port 1521
        Oracle 7.3

    On a Solaris 2.6 (heavily  patched) and Oracle 8.0.4 Database  CPU
    utilization climbed and hovered at  a high 49.9x% and didn't  fall
    below 49.7x%.  This is on a UE450 with 2 processors and 1.5GB RAM.
    Oracle required  a restart  to get  it back  into previous working
    condition.

SOLUTION

    At your router, you could (and should) block access to the  oracle
    ports, by default 1521 and 1526.