Re: Recovery from .ora on Oracle 8.0

jeanmartinlemieux_at_gmail.com wrote:
> Hi
>
> I want to apologize first, this is probably a stupid question but I am
> no DBA and really in need of help =)
>
> We have this client whose hard drive crashed. He had no backups and
> didn't even know what version of Oracle he was running (we eventually
> figured he was running 8.0). All he managed to salvage was the files on
> his other hard drives, a total of 9GB of .ora (SYS1ORCF.ORA,
> USR1ORCF.ORA, INDX1ORCF.ORA, TMP1ORCF.ORA and RBS1ORCF.ORA).
>

Most likely these files are in an inconsistent state; this means recovery and you're out of luck as you have no redo logs nor archive logs to do the job. Simply trying to use these files, as is, will, most likely, result in wasted effort as the instance will start but the database won't mount nor will it open. And, as there is no backup there is little, if any, hope of resurrecting this database.

> I've noticed that the demo database of Oracle 8.0 has the same file
> structure (except it's ORCL and not ORCF) so I figured all I have to
> do is configure the database to use my files but I really have no Idea
> how to do that and haven't been able to find anything on my own.
>
> So this is my question, is what I'm trying to do even possible? And
> if so, any help would be greatly appreciated!
>

>From the facts you've presented, no, it isn't possible. Unless you can
find a backup of that database somewhere, or you can guarantee the database was shut down prior to the crash.

> Thanks for your time.
>
> Jean-Martin Lemieux

David Fitzjarrell Received on Wed Apr 19 2006 - 14:29:02 CDT