ORA-00600 with [12333] is an error that I have encountered on multiple occasions. This post is to shed some light on what this error is all about.
To start with let us try to understand when does oracle report ora-00600 error. An ora-00600 error is raised in the exception handler section of Oracle’s c-program code. i.e. Coders have forseen certain exceptional situation that are potential threats to data integrity or memory integrity and written appropriate exceptional handlers to report a ora-00600 error with appropriate information about the exception condition.
Details like [12333] indicate or provide hints as to what caused the exception. ora-00600 [12333] is reported when the server recieves data from a client and the server cannot recognize the data format. This error mostly is because of issues with network and does not indicate any data corruption.
Few Common Causes & Suggestions:
1. An incompatible client software can cause such an internal error. Metalink document 207303.1 explains the supported combinations of clients and Server release.
2. An incompatible NLS settings on Client. Check NLS settings especially ORA_NLS33 for 9i, ORA_NLS10 for 10g.
3. Apart from this, it could be because of network issues, client software, TIMEOUT setting, etc. Try to narrow down the error to a particular client machine/ client software.
4. This can be because of an Oracle bug also. Refer to metalink document 428629.1 for list of known bugs with ora-00600 [12333].
As a last resort you can check this with Oracle Support for any new issues.