Block Change Tracking and Duplicate: avoid ORA-19755

If you use Block Change Tracking on your production database and try to duplicate it, you there are good possibilities that you will encounter this error:

The problem is caused by the block change tracking file entry that exists in the target controlfile, but Oracle can’t find the file because the directory structure on the auxiliary server changes.

After the restore and recovery of the auxiliary database, the duplicate process tries to open the DB but the bct file doesn’t exist and the error is thrown.

If you do a quick google search you will find several workarounds:

  • disable the block change tracking after you get the error and manually open the auxiliary instance (this prevent the possibility to get the duplicate outcome from the rman return code)
  • disable the BCT on the target before running the duplicate (this forces your incremental backups to read all your target database!)
  • Richard Harrison proposed another workaround, you can read more about it here.

There is another workaround that I like more (and that you can also find as comment in Richard’s post):

  • Disable the Block Change Tracking on the auxiliary while it’s doing the restore/recovery (in mounted status)

(This solutions isn’t coming from me, but as far as I know, the father of this solution is a colleague working at Trivadis.)

You can easily fork a process before running the duplicate command that:

  • loops and checks the auxiliary instance status
  • run the disable as soon as the auxiliary is mounted

I’ve worked out this script that does the job:

Run it  just before the duplicate! e.g.

HTH

Ludovico

Check the actual ulimits for all the running Oracle instances

I’ve read the recent good post from my friend Rene on Pythian’s Blog about how to troubleshoot when user ulimits are different from what specified in limits.conf:

Quick Tip : Oracle User Ulimit Doesn’t Reflect Value on /etc/security/limits.conf

I would like to add my 2 cents:

Once you fix the problem, you may want to check (any maybe monitor) when an instance is running with a wrong value (and maybe encounter the famous Error message: Linux-x86_64 Error: 23: Too many open files in system).

This single line gives you an overview of all your instances at once:

If you find any wrong values, plan a restart before you encounter any error during peak hours!

Ludo

 

 

RAC Attack! 12c is back to Geneva!

ninja-suisseVersion française ici.

After a great success in 2014, RAC Attack! comes back to Geneva!
Set up an Oracle Real Application Clusters 12c environment on your laptop, try advanced configurations or simply take the opportunity to discuss about Oracle technology with the best experts in Suisse Romande!
Experienced volunteers (ninjas) will help you  address any related issues and guide you through the setup process.

Where? Trivadis office, Chemin Château-Bloch 11, CH1219 Geneva

When? Thursday September 17th, 2015, from 17h00 onwards

Cost? It is a FREE event! It is a community based, informal and enjoyable workshop. You just need to bring your own laptop and your desire to have fun!

Confirmed Ninjas:
Ludovico Caldara
– Oracle ACE, RAC SIG Chair & co-auteur RAC Attack
Eric Grancher – Membre OAK Table & Senior DBA
Jacques Kostic – OCM 11g & Senior Consultant chez Trivadis

Limited places! Reserve your seat and T-shirt now!

tshirt_racattack_2015Agenda:
17.00 – Welcome and T-shirt distribution
17.30 – RAC Attack 12c part I
19.30 – Pizza and Beers! (sponsored by Trivadis)
20.00 – RAC Attack 12c part II
22.00 – Group photo and wrap-up!!

Still undecided? Look at what we did last year!

This event is sold out. No more seats available, sorry! Would you be interested in joining the event next year? Drop me an email!

Smart Bash Prompt for Oracle

If you are an Oracle customer who has several database versions running, you have to deal with scripts that become more and more complex to maintain. Depending on the version or the edition of your database, you may want to run different pieces of code. This forces you to get programmatically more information about your database version and edition (e.g., in order to run a statspack or AWR report if your software is either Enterprise or Standard).
The most common way to get information about the software is connecting to the database and getting it through a couple of selects. But what if you don’t have any running databases?
The ORACLE_HOME inventory has such information, and you can get it with a short shell function:

The snippet searches for a patchset entry in comps.xml to get the patch version rather than the base version (for releases prior to 11gR2 where out-of-place patching occurs). If a patchset cannot be found, it looks for the base version. Depending on the major release, the information about the edition is either in globalvariables.xml (11g, 12c) or in context.xml (10g).
When you call this “ohversion” function, you get both the Oracle version and the edition of your current ORACLE_HOME.
If you’re using the bash as user shell, you may want to take one step forward and  include this information in a much fancier bash prompt than the prompt by default:

2015_06_05_16_22_56_sso0419iAlthough this prompt may seem long, it has several advantages that save you a lot of typing:
• The newline character inside the prompt let’s you start typing commands on an almost empty line so you don’t have to worry about how long your command is.
• The full username@host:path can be copied and pasted quickly for scp commands.
• The time inside the square brackets is helpful to track timings.
• The indication of the current environment (version, edition, SID) lets you know which environment you’re working on.
• The leading number is the exit code of the last command ($?). It’s green when the exit code is zero and red for all other exit codes.
• Hash characters before and after the prompt mitigate the risk of copying and pasting the wrong line by mistake inside your session.

Note: this post originally appeared on IOUG Tips & Best Practices Booklet 9th edition.