ORA-00600 during controlfile recreation

The destructive errors like ORA-00600, ORA-07445 etc show up at unusual times, one such perfect example of getting an ORA-00600 is explained below - it appeared during the execution of CREATE CONTROLFILE script. Before we go any further, here is a quick background of what's being done. A 10.2.0.1 database is to be migrated from one server to another.

As a proactive DBA, which I am not most of the time ;-) - I dumped the control file to the trace and went about creating the scripts to copy the files from the source to destination. All went well until I confronted ORA-600 during the control file recreation.

I had to quickly check the Oracle version which i am currently using, just to make sure there is not a mis-match between the source and destination Oracle binaries. The error pointed me out to a trace file that Oracle usually generates when it needs to provide more information on a particular error.

SQL> CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE DATABASE "PROD" NORESETLOGS  ARCHIVELOG
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01503: CREATE CONTROLFILE failed
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kccscf_1], [9], [106012], [65535],
[], [], [], []

here is the error entry in alert log

Errors in file /prd/u01/PROD/udump/prod_ora_12326.trc:
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kccscf_1], [9], [106012], [65535], [], [], [], []
ORA-1503 signalled during: CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE DATABASE "PROD" NORESETLOGS  ARCHIVELOG


UNIX$> more /prd/u01/PROD/udump/prod_ora_12326.trc

ksedmp: internal or fatal error
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kccscf_1], [9], [106012], [65535], [], [], [], []
Current SQL statement for this session:
CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE DATABASE "PROD" NORESETLOGS  ARCHIVELOG
    MAXLOGFILES 255
    MAXLOGMEMBERS 5
    MAXDATAFILES 12144
    MAXINSTANCES 12
    MAXLOGHISTORY 106012

Everything looked fine but there is no clue as to what's causing the mighty ORA-600 in this occasion, I gave it a couple of tries myself to troubleshoot before turning over to Mr. Ellison's boys for help!!!. A severity - 1 was raised for this issue and I was pointed out at the value of MAXLOGHISTORY to be equal to 65535 as the maximum limit against the value that I had as 106012.

This looks silly, how come a trace controlfile that was dumped from an SqlPlus session have a value not recommended by Oracle itself. It was later reported by the Oracle technician that its a Bug in 10.2.0.1 which has been fixed in 10.2.0.4. Corrected script is shown below.

CREATE CONTROLFILE REUSE DATABASE "PROD" NORESETLOGS  ARCHIVELOG
    MAXLOGFILES 255
    MAXLOGMEMBERS 5
    MAXDATAFILES 12144
    MAXINSTANCES 12
    MAXLOGHISTORY 65535