Re: 8i backup and recovery

Hello,

In article <95cd51c.0111201913.69e34b17_at_posting.google.com>, godmann <allanwtham_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> Management trust the certified Rman better than hand-written, old-fashion
>scripts. I started doing OS hotbackup but then I switched.

Is it just me or are there serious caveats in RMAN usage? Meaning that RMAN, being certified or not, isn't going to take you anywhere without hand-written scripts and expertise?

I started experimenting with RMAN several weeks ago, excercising several worst-case scenarios. Here's one of them, that I wasn't able to resolve with RMAN:

o All datafiles, control files, redo logs and archive logs   are lost.
o The RMAN catalog is lost.
o We want to recover to the state of the last RMAN backup. o We have a complete RMAN backup set, created with the following   script:

  connect target $target;
  connect catalog $catalog;
  run {
    allocate channel ch1 type disk;
    set limit channel ch1 kbytes = $fsize;     backup

      incremental level = $inc cumulative
      database
      format '$bckdir/%U.inc'
      include current controlfile
      tag = 'inc_lev$inc';

    sql 'ALTER SYSTEM ARCHIVE LOG CURRENT'; # archives current redo log
                                            # as well as
                                            # all unarchived logs
    backup archivelog from time 'SYSDATE - $days'
      skip inaccessible
      format '$bckdir/%U.arc'
      delete input;

The key issue here is, I found no way to extract the control file from the RMAN backup set. The manual says to call oracle support, but that doesn't really fit the picture I have of a decent backup & recovery procedure.

I ended up including the line

    copy current controlfile to '$bckdir/$time.ctl';

in the RMAN script, which allows me to do recovery as follows:

  run {
    startup nomount force;
    allocate channel ch1 type disk;
    # restore control file to new location     replicate controlfile from

       '/usr/local/oracle_bck/20011117/20011117173604.ctl';     startup mount force;
  }

  register database;
  resync catalog from controlfilecopy

          '/usr/local/oracle_bck/20011117/20011117173604.ctl';

BTW, is there any way to tell RMAN to backup the catalog to a raw file? I know I should be able to use imp/exp, but a exp on the remote database gives me the following error message:

  EXP-00037: Export views not compatible with database version   EXP-00000: Export terminated unsuccessfully

Also, an all-in-one approach without having to use different utilities would be nice.

Regards,
-Rodney Volz Received on Tue Nov 27 2001 - 05:25:27 CST