Interesting RMAN duplicate problem.

From: Dunbar, Norman <norman.dunbar_at_environment-agency.gov.uk>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:40:53 -0000
Message-ID: <919FC80F27E0C6428106496EDF92A7520B132FE8_at_EXCCLUS05.PRODDS.NTNL>



I use the term "interesting" in the subject line loosely!

I'm cloning an Oracle 9i (9208) production database to a different test server.
I decided to use an existing rman backup of the database and some archivelogs. The rman backup was taken in October to clone the production database to a reporting database on the same server. We don't use rman normally for backups. (We probably should though!)

After 36 hours restoring the database files, the recovery stage failed as there were missing archivelogs between the highest available in the rman backup and the lowest available online at the moment.

As I'm not really interested in having the clone right up to date, I'm happy to do a Point In Time recovery of the clone. And this is where I lose the plot!

Any command I use such as:

recover clone database to scn ???????;
recover clone database to time "date & time"; recover clone database to sequence ????? thread 1;

All fail with a message that my SYSTEM data file will be inconsistent if I open the database with resetlogs.

I have tried PITR (within RMAN) to :

  • The date and time that the backup (of the database file, not the archivelogs) completed.
  • The SCN in the first, middle and last archivelog files that are present in the rman backup of the logs.
  • The log sequence of the first, second, third, middle few, last half dozen log files that are part of the backup.

Robert Freeman's book "Oracle 9i RMAN Backup & Recovery" has "Case Study #9 Completing a failed duplication manually" on pages 467 and 468, which is right up my street - unfortunately, Tim - the example DBA - is in full possession of ALL the archived logs. Lucky Tim, I have gaps!

My first question is, do I have any chance of getting a recovery done that will get me past this error or should I just give it a miss and start another duplication with a fresh rman backup?

My second question is, rman appears to recover clone database then delete archivelogs. How do I managed to restore the deleted logs back to the correct location on the clone server?

I'm not bothered about this database, I'm about to kick off a new clone of the production one - that takes about 6 hours to complete. I'd love to avoid another 36 odd hours of restoring/recovering if possible, but if I have to do it the hard way, I'm ok with that.

If this was a production database problem, I would (probably) be "bricking it" by now in this situation - if I had a gap in my archived logs for some reason and a seeming inability to open the database in a consistent manner. I'd like to know if there is a solution - just in case!

Thanks,
Norman.

Norman Dunbar
Contract Oracle DBA
CIS Engineering Services
Internal : 7 28 2051
External : 0113 231 2051

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Received on Wed Jan 27 2010 - 04:40:53 CST

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