I need assistance with Oracle error - "ALTER SYSTEM SET LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_1 ... "

I'm logged into sql*plus , and I'm trying to test out some Oracle memory management capabilities:

I enter:

ALTER SYSTEM SET LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_1  = '/home/oracle/Coffee' scope=both;

I get this eror:

ERROR AT LINE 1:
ORA - 32017 : failure in updating SPFILE
ORA - 16179 : incremental changes to "LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_1" not allowed with SPFILE

What is the issue with SPFILE and this ome?

Solution

You are missing the LOCATION attribute:

$ oerr ora 16179
16179, 00000, "incremental changes to \"%s\" not allowed with SPFILE"
// *Cause:  Incremental changes to a log_archive_dest_n parameter cannot
//          be made when using an SPFILE.
// *Action: Specify either LOCATION or SERVICE plus all other attributes
//          to be set in one ALTER SYSTEM/SESSION SET command.

The LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n of the Oracle Initialization Parameters Reference says:

The LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n initialization parameter defines up to 31 (where n = 1, 2, 3, ... 31) destinations, each of which must specify either the LOCATION or the SERVICE attribute to specify where to archive the redo data. All other attributes are optional. Note that whether you are specifying the LOCATION attribute or the SERVICE attribute, it must be the first attribute supplied in the list of attributes.