We are having 2 or three oracle errors ora-12547 every hour on several of our apache web servers and our database server. I have spoken to oracle support and they say the problem is an error 104 coming from the OS. They ascertain this information from a trace I run on the client connection. I spoken with red hat support and they said they have no records of a problem with error 104. I poked around on the web and have found several mentions of intermittent problems with 3com cards. Don't know if related since not red hat but I thought was interesting. Our database server returns the following from a uname -a Linux db2.emazing.com 2.2.14-11.lfs #1 SMP Fri Sep 15 20:31:51 EDT 2000 i686 unknown our web server has the following results. Linux web2.emazing.com 2.2.5-22smp #1 SMP Wed Jun 2 09:11:51 EDT 1999 i686 unknown We are running oracle 8.1.6.1 on the database server.
Please look into /var/log/messages for kernel logs that point to driver problems and try using newer kernels or other network cards if this the real problem.