Symptoms

JIRA doesn't start or has a runtime error. The following text appears in the atlassian-jira.log or catalina.out:

Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (ORA-00257: archiver error. Connect internal only, until freed.)

or just

ORA-00257: archiver error. Connect internal only, until freed

Cause

The ORA-00257 error is raised when the Oracle archive destination disk or volume is full.

Resolution

1. Check the available space on the filesystem where the Oracle archive redo logs are stored. This can be done with the following SQL query:

   show parameter log_archive

2. If the disk is full, try to free space using any of the following methods:

• • compressing older files
  • removing older archives
  • adding more storage

This archived thread on Oracle community forums discusses the troubleshooting in detail.