Oracle Recovery Manager is an excellent tool for the backup and recovery of Oracle databases. It allows you to easily backup your information on scheduled bases to ensure against all forms of data loss. Additionally, it makes the process of recovering from data corruption to disk loss in a very expedient manor. The following instruction set covers the setup of an oracle database for storage of your recovery catalog and the cataloging of your first target database. This instruction set was written from a Linux installed Oracle system; however it will work on most any flavor of UNIX.

1. Logon to your linux server as the Oracle software owner.

2. Use the ./dbca command as follows to open up the Oracle Database Creation Assistant or create a database named RMAN manually. Note: This oracle database is only used to store the catalog information of backed-up databases, thus the storage and memory requirements are very low. I would not allocate more than 200MB of space and 100MB of memory to this database.

linux1# cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin
linux1#
linux1# ./dbca

3. If using dbca, follow the prompted screens to create a general purpose database.

4. If the database is created using manual methods ensure that the following Oracle scripts are executed after build.

connect sys/oracle@RMAN as sysdba
set echo off
@?/rdbms/admin/catalog
@?/rdbms/admin/catproc
@?/rdbms/admin/catrep
@?/rdbms/admin/catexp
@?/rdbms/admin/catldr
@?/rdbms/admin/dbmsutil
@?/rdbms/admin/prvtutil.plb
@?/rdbms/admin/dbmssql
@?/rdbms/admin/prvtsql.plb
@?/rdbms/admin/dbmsdefr
@?/rdbms/admin/prvtdefr.plb
@?/rdbms/admin/catqueue
@?/rdbms/admin/dbmsaqad
@?/rdbms/admin/prvtaqad.plb
@?/rdbms/admin/catcr
@?/rdbms/admin/prvtcr.plb
connect system/oracle@RMAN
@?/rdbms/admin/catdbsyn
@?/sqlplus/admin/pupbld.sql
conn sys/oracle@RMAN as sysdba
@?/rdbms/admin/utlrp

5. Logon to your newly created database and create a tablespace for the RMAN user with the following command.

create tablespace rman
datafile ‘/u05/oradata/RMAN/rman01.dbf’ size 200m
extent management local autoallocate
segment space management auto;

6. Logon to your newly created database and create the RMAN User with the following command. Then grant the RMAN user the privileges: recovery_catalog_owner, connect, and resource.

create user rman identified by rman
temporary tablespace temp
default tablespace rman quota unlimited on rman;

grant recovery_catalog_owner to rman;

grant connect,resource to rman;

7. Add the following text to the listener.ora file on the server hosting the RMAN database and ensure that an entry is listed on all database servers to be backed-up in their individual tnsnames.ora files for the newly created RMAN database.

(SID_DESC =
(ORACLE_HOME = /u01/opt/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/Db_1)
(SID_NAME = RMAN1)
)

8. Issue a stop and restart of the oracle listener for changes to take affect.

linux1# lsnrctl stop

linux1# lsnrctl start

9. Register the target database in the catalog.

10. Logon to your server and set the ORACLE_SID parameter to your target database.

linux1# echo $ORACLE_SID

linux1# ORACLE_SID=orcl
linux1# export ORACLE_SID
linux1# echo $ORACLE_SID
orcl
linux1#

11. Execute the command , to logon to the RMAN utility.

linux1# rman target / catalog rman/rman@RMAN

Recovery Manager: Release 10.2.0.2.0 – Production on Wed Sep 24 15:42:29 2008

Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved.

connected to target database: ORCL (DBID=3051662701)
connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN>

12. Issue the command in the RMAN utility.

RMAN> create catalog

recovery catalog created

RMAN>

13. Issue the command in the RMAN utility.

RMAN> register database;

database registered in recovery catalog
starting full resync of recovery catalog
full resync complete

RMAN>

14. NOTE: By default RMAN will attempt to register a TAPE drive in the system. If you do not have a tape drive available specify.

RMAN> CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE ‘SBT_TAPE’ clear;

old RMAN configuration parameters:
CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE ‘SBT_TAPE’ MAXPIECESIZE 10 G;
old RMAN configuration parameters are successfully deleted
starting full resync of recovery catalog
full resync complete

This completes the creation of RMAN recovery catalog and registration of your target database.

Larry Catt, OCP 9i, 10g
oracle@allcompute.com
www.allcompute.com