Killing Oracle Sessions

The SQL*Plus Approach

The NT Approach
The UNIX Approach

The SQL*Plus Approach

Sessions can be killed from within oracle using the ALTER SYSTEM KILL SESSION syntax.

First identify the offending session as follows:

SELECT s.sid,
s.serial#,
s.osuser,
s.program
FROM v$session s;

SID SERIAL# OSUSER PROGRAM

---------- ---------- ------------------------------ ---------------
1 1 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
2 1 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
3 1 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
4 1 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
5 1 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
6 1 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
20 60 SYSTEM DBSNMP.EXE
43 11215 USER1 SQLPLUSW.EXE
33 5337 USER2 SQLPLUSW.EXE
The SID and SERIAL# values of the relevant session can then be substituted into the following
statement:
SQL> ALTER SYSTEM KILL SESSION 'sid,serial#';
In some situations the Oracle.exe is not able to kill the session immediately. In these cases the
session will be "marked for kill". It will then be killed as soon as possible.

Issuing the ALTER SYSTEM KILL SESSION command is the only safe way to kill an Oracle
session. If the marked session persists for some time you may consider killing the process at the
operating system level, as explained below. Killing OS processes is dangerous and can lead to
instance failures, so do this at your own peril.

It is possible to force the kill by adding the IMMEDIATE keyword:

SQL> ALTER SYSTEM KILL SESSION 'sid,serial#' IMMEDIATE;
This should prevent you ever needing to use the orakill.exe in Windows, or the kill
command in UNIX/Linux.

The NT Approach
To kill the session via the NT operating system, first identify the session as follows:
SELECT s.sid,
p.spid,
s.osuser,
s.program
FROM v$process p,
v$session s
 WHERE p.addr = s.paddr;

SID SPID OSUSER PROGRAM

---------- --------- ------------------------------ ---------------
1 310 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
2 300 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
3 309 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
4 299 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
5 302 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
6 350 SYSTEM ORACLE.EXE
20 412 SYSTEM DBSNMP.EXE
43 410 USER1 SQLPLUSW.EXE
33 364 USER2 SQLPLUSW.EXE
The SID and SPID values of the relevant session can then be substituted into the following
command issued from the command line:
C:> orakill ORACLE_SID spid
The session thread should be killed immediately and all resources released.

The UNIX Approach

To kill the session via the UNIX operating system, first identify the session in the same way as
the NT approach, then substitute the relevant SPID into the following command:
% kill -9 spid
If in doubt check that the SPID matches the UNIX PROCESSID shown using:
% ps -ef | grep ora
The session thread should be killed immediately and all resources released.

For further information see:

Terminating Sessions
ALTER SYSTEM "end_session_clauses"
Hope this helps. Regards Tim...