Kill Session Not Release Locks

Problem Description

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You have killed a session at the os level. Now, the session is showing "killed" in v$session but v$access is showing objects locked by this session id and v$lock shows locks held by this sid.

Solution Description

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You may have killed the client process and there is still a shadow process for this session running. The shadow process can be tricky to identify. It may take considerable searching by the dba who is familiar with the os and database environment to identify the process.

You might look for processes with a parent pid of 1, meaning that they are owned by the system. Also, look for processes with a start time that matches the start time of the killed process.

Explanation

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Even though you shouldn't kill the session at the os level before killing it in Oracle, Oracle should release locks and cleanup after the session is killed at the os level. If locks are not being released, it is an indication that there are other os processes running that are associated with the session.