ORA-16055: FAL request rejected - Archival Error. Archiver continuing.

ORA-16055: FAL request rejected
Tue Jun 29 14:10:53 2010
ORACLE Instance APROD - Archival Error. Archiver continuing.
ARC3: FAL archive failed, see trace file.
ARCH: FAL archive failed. Archiver continuing
ARCH: Connecting to console port...
ARCH: FAL archive failed. Archiver continuing

Cause

Unable to Archive is one of the more common scenarios associated with database hangs. There are several sources.
Many of the sources include the following

• Lack of storage space: Quota or physical
• Lack of Privs : Usually failure to read or write files given the current configuration
• Missing logfiles due to deletion including manual, RMAN or other
  
• Missing logfiles due to Fail-over gap
• Missing logfiles due to altered or unavailable source for the files
• Destination unreachable or unavailable where the files exist
  
• Destination incorrectly defined often due to altered or moved logfiles

Solution

Make sure logs are at the proper location and manually transport the files if possible or as needed

FAL may actually miss logfiles after a failover for some versions and patchset levels of the Oracle RDBMS
While these problems may occur for any of several reasons the manual moving of the files to the expected location is almost always a successful and immediate workaround.

As previously mentioned: there are several sources of Archival problems:

Review the ALERT.LOG for the best information on resolutions or the source of the problem so that the resolution can be derived based on the messages seen.

There are several other notes with potential solutions so if this resolution does not fix your problem please continue to research alternative sources and resolutions for your archival problem