DBA Daily Telegraph

RMAN duplicate in details

2011-11-07T23:51:00.001+11:00

(originally published at Pythian) Its all started from the question on communities.oracle.comAn "enhancement" in 11.2 prevents RMAN duplicating non self-contained subset of a databasewhere new feature of RMAN in 11.2 was shown which prevents duplication of sets of tablespaces if they are not self-contained.I took debug of duplication and figured out that RMAN internally executes procedure

Dear DBA_SCHEDULER_RUNNING_JOBS, where have you been?!

2011-10-12T21:37:00.004+11:00

originally published at Pythian (story based on real events) Where: Meeting room, Pythian office, Sydney, Australia.When: Afternoon, after lunch time.What: Discussion of planned maintenance for one of clients.DBA1: We should check DBA_JOBS_RUNNING and DBA_SCHEDULER_RUNNING_JOBSthat there are no running jobs. And if there are no any we should continue with next step of our plan.DBA2: Do you mean

RDBMS Online Patching

2011-08-23T11:08:00.006+10:00

(originally published at Pythian) If you support Oracle RDBMS 11.2.0.2 and want to zero downtime applying patches to databases then it is time to have a look at new possibility of Online Patching delivered with 11.2.0.2 version and described here RDBMS Online Patching Aka Hot Patching [ID 761111.1] The syntax is "opatch apply online -connectString ... " but I could not find description of the

CheckSystemSpace ignorance

2011-08-22T22:58:00.020+10:00

(originally published at Pythian) Every installation is unique. It can be the same software and hardware but one installation will squease you like a lemon in jucier another one will make you feel that you and only you is the boss here. The way how it behaves depends not only on stars location and on Saturn position in Zenith but also on how scripts finished, what SA did not implement and change

MOS KB articles for July 27, 2011

2011-07-26T14:21:00.008+10:00

Checking recent articles I noticed that there are lots of Master Note type of notesappeared on MyOracleSupport that come like aggregation of different linksrelated to topics. Exadata, RAC, Data Guard, Data Warehousing, etc..It might be very useful when problems appeared or when knowledgeabout the technology should be gotten. I wish those topics had RSSfeeds that can keep you informed about

MOS KB articles for July 20, 2011

2011-07-20T21:08:00.007+10:00

During search in knowledge base on My Oracle Support site noticedthat now list of prompts appears based on typed letters, words.It can be helpful despite results of search do not even have the samephrase which were selected from suggested list.Another observation - combination "ORA-" does not show any match,might be because of too long list of similarities?Today's Hot Topics e-mail got list of

MOS KB articles for July 19, 2011

2011-07-19T21:53:00.007+10:00

Several articles in Hot Topics e-mails drew my attention today:10.2.0.5.5 Grid Control Patch Set Update (PSU) [ID 1335690.1]good to know that PSU5 as well as PSU4 are OMS pathes only."hcheck.sql" script to check for known problems in Oracle8i, Oracle9i, Oracle10g and Oracle 11g [ID 136697.1]script creates a package under SYS schema that checks data dictionary for common dictionary problems.Master

MOS KB articles for July 17, 2011

2011-07-17T22:45:00.003+10:00

There are things that being executed fast and some of them are:Exadata queries and... vacation. Looks like I have not had it,but that's it and I am back to winter Sydney from Russian summer.But back to business...Reviewing recent Oracle Support Hot Topics e-mails I noticed thatfrom July 10th format of the table with bugs had been updatedand now there are names of bugs already shown.Great job

MOS KB articles for June 08, 2011

2011-06-08T23:05:00.007+10:00

Everyday Hot Topics e-mail did not bring any news on my servicerequest created about why public synonym created on non-existedobject in non-existed schema (11.2) is always in valid status(even recompilation runs without errors), but there are severalarticles in the e-mail that I think are worth to have a look at:OCR / Vote disk Maintenance Operations: (ADD/REMOVE/REPLACE/MOVE) [ID 428681.1]The

MOS KB articles for June 07, 2011

2011-06-07T22:43:00.007+10:00

From several articles that came on June 07, 2011 I chose these to have a look at:Troubleshooting when srvctl can't start RAC instance, but sqlplus can start it [ID 844272.1]Unable to Manage the Manually Configured Listener with Oracle Restart [ID 987825.1]it is the problem of standalone GI 11.2.0.1, not 11.2.0.2Things to Consider Before Upgrade to 11.2.0.2 Database Performance [ID 1320966.1]it

Oracle Support knowledge articles

2011-06-06T13:26:00.006+10:00

Recent reviews of bugs with latest numbers showed that there are notonly bugs that already taken to work on but also lots of other createdproblems/issues/questions that sometimes just related to wrong syntax,misunderstanding of commands or can be duplication of already loggedbugs.Considering all that, I decided to do review of Knowledge Articlessent in Hot Topics e-mail since it has already

MOS Bugs for June 02, 2011

2011-06-03T12:49:00.003+10:00

Some of recently created MOS bugsBug IDProductDescriptionTypeVersionPlatform12616206Oracle Server - Enterprise EditionMRP KILLS RFS ITERATIVELLY AND CANNOT RESOLVE ARCHIVE GAPDefect11.2.0.2Linux x86-6412615371Oracle Server - Enterprise EditionROWS LOST IN ARRAY UPDATE IF UPDATE CURSOR IS INVALIDATEDDefect11.2.0.1Linux x86-6412614895Enterprise Manager Grid Control11G OMS NOTIFICATION ISSUE -

MOS Bugs for June 01, 2011

2011-06-02T13:42:00.005+10:00

Along with everyday list of bugs reference to one of insteresting notes came todayin Hot Topics e-mailRACcheck - RAC Configuration Audit ToolIt states that tool supports Oracle Enteprise Edition from 10.2.0.1 to 11.2.0.2for Linux 32 and 64-bit, AIX and SPARC Solaris. No support for Solaris x86 and LinuxItanium yet.It would be interesting to see script reaction for execution on Standard Editionand

role of _FIX_CONTROL

2011-06-01T21:24:00.007+10:00

There is a note Init.ora Parameter "_FIX_CONTROL" [Hidden] Reference Note [ID 567171.1]on My Oracle Support that not only explains the role of the hidden parameter but alsocontains references to known bugs in different versions wherethe parameter controls fixes.A full list of bugs and their status (OFF or ON: column VALUE - 0 or 1)for system and session level (for current session) can be foundin

MOS Bugs for May 31, 2011

2011-06-01T13:18:00.003+10:00

I put some modifications to the table that represents information aboutlatest bugs caught from Hot Topics e-mail.There are 5 bugs for May 31, 2011:Bug IDProductDescriptionTypeVersionPlatform12606936Enterprise Manager Grid ControlINCORRECTLY REPORTING CPU_COUNT=0Defect11.1.0.1.0Linux x86-6412606721Oracle Server - Enterprise EditionIF APPLICATION VIP EXISTS, DBCA FAILS TO CREATE DB RESOURCE WITH

MOS bugs for May 30, 2011

2011-05-31T12:48:00.010+10:00

One of the helpful features that MOS providesis "Hot Topics via e-mail" newsletter that gives information on recently updatedknowledge articles and freshly created product bugs.Knowledge articles come as links named after articles but bugs appear in the e-mailjust as IDs belong to area of interest like "Oracle Server - Enterprise Edition", etc.which is not allowing to understand how applicable to

Data Pump monitoring

2010-11-23T23:09:00.006+11:00

(originally published at Pythian)During database maintenance one of the main questions is when long running processeslike export, import, backup, recovery, flashback, etc. are finished.I usually use v$session_longops which allows to get some estimation of when process finished:select message, time_remaining/3600 hrs from v$session_longops where sofar <> totalworkAfter one of the recent Data Pump

installer 11.2.0.2 downloadUpdates option

2010-11-01T09:49:00.004+11:00

(originally published at Pythian)The new functionality to download latest patches or either apply saved onescame with installer of Oracle 11.2.0.2 (Software Updates Option)It can be used not only through OUI but with silent installation too.There are several options and variables available to get patches from MOS:oracle.installer.autoupdates...MYORACLESUPPORT_...AUTOUPDATES_MYORACLESUPPORT_...

chopt utility

2010-10-25T23:29:00.007+11:00

(originally published at Pythian)There is a new tool came with Oracle 11g Rel.2 that helps to modify options ininstalled oracle home (Enabling and Disabling Database Options)It is very simple and straightforward utility that recompiles database kernelwith different flags.[oracle@r1 bin]$ choptusage:chopt

Redo Transport Compression

2010-10-07T00:37:00.005+11:00

originally published at PythianI was co-presenting recently at Sydney Oracle Meetupabout Data Guard Compression and in preparation I didsome tests to see how it works for 11.2.0.1 (Linux x86-64)...and I am still not able to see it working.There is a note"Redo Transport Compression in a Data Guard Environment [ID 729551.1]"on MOS how to set compression for redo transport destinationand for log

Silent installation of Enteprise Manager Grid Control 11g

2010-06-05T20:12:00.007+10:00

(originally posted at Pythian)One of the first questions that I asked myself when EM GC 11g came out is how would a silentinstallation go especially taking into account the use of WebLogic server as the http server.But before any attempt of silent installation I started the GC 11g GUI installation to local VM machine(Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.4 64-bit) with an allocated 2Gb of memory and got

Oracle 11.2 silent installation on opensolaris

2009-12-17T14:36:00.010+11:00

Even it is not certified but after appearance of Oracle 11.2 for Solaris (x86-64)I decided to give a try for silent installation of Oracle on opensolarisI downloaded Solaris iso and installed it as 64-bit on one of virtualmachines with 1Gb of RAM. Installation of OS went without problemand shortly I was enjoying a great look of OpenSolaris.I stopped myself admiring good looking interface (

Exadata Simulation test

2009-09-21T16:38:00.005+10:00

As you know, 11gR2 came with new feature that you can simulate performance effectsfrom Exadata Storage Server on your workload.Just to check that functionality I installed Oracle 11g Release 2 on my local VM(Oracle EL 5.2 32bit) and created test database called o1102I created a user, a table with 5000000 entries, tuning set after that and executed analysisusing the script provided in $ORACLE_HOME

Silent installation of Oracle Scheduler Agent

2009-07-06T21:18:00.009+10:00

One of the Oracle 11g New Features is Remote External JobsTo be able execute external jobs on remote host Oracle Scheduler Agent should be installed.It is coming as part of Oracle Database Gateways 11g installation and can be installed in silent mode.Giving that, I decided to install the agent using silent mode: created response file undertemporary location and left only entries with defined

duplicate target database from active database

2009-06-24T14:55:00.013+10:00

It is always educational to get errors, problems during testing or creation of new systemsespecially when you are learning new features or investigating how different configurationsbehave and real lfie cases sometimes are not the same as it described in documentation.That's why I prefer not to think about configuration of test databases on VM religiouslybut to create them in minimal configuration

READ-ONLY standby database in Oracle 11g Data Guard

2009-06-18T10:52:00.009+10:00

Oracle 11g came with new feature called active data guard which allows to apply redowhile database is opened for read-only access. This feature is not free and license shouldbe purchased, that's why I was wondering how it can be managed in dgmgrl command lineto open standby database just in read-only mode w/o active recovery and how to return it back.I created Data Guard configuration with Oracle

Changing SID for standby database in Data Guard configuration

2009-06-10T14:53:00.010+10:00

There was a question at oracle-l forum regarding possibility to use different SIDfor primary and standby databases. It should be possible and it is possiblesince you can create standby database on the same host as primary.Another thing that expressed my interest is Data Guard reaction for standby's SID changeI have created DG configuration with 2 standby databases (11.1.0.7 on CentOS 64-bit as

Fast-Start Failover on Oracle Error Conditions

2009-05-29T13:08:00.014+10:00

Using Oracle 11g Data Guard configuration you can initiate Fast-Start Failoverbased on different Oracle errors - Configure Conditions for Fast-start FailoverI decided to test it and created DG configuration using not only documentationbut running "ENABLE FAST_START FAILOVER" command, getting errors :) ,looking into drc...log files (it is 11g, they are under trace directory),correcting problems

TNS names parsing in Data Guard configurations

2009-05-28T13:38:00.002+10:00

Building DG configurations for Oracle 10g and 11g databasesI noticed that 11g does not do transformation of tns nameprovided at stage of DG creation with regard to Oracle 10gThat might be useful if you need to tune some parametersof SQL*Net - SDU, RECV_BUF_SIZE, SEND_BUF_SIZEBut some problems can be hidden if full string of connectionis not shown but dr....log can shed some light on them.Have a

silent installation of agent 10.2.0.5

2009-05-01T12:55:00.006+10:00

I recently installed agents 10.2.0.5 on SunOS (SPARC) 5.9 and Linux x86-64silently and noted the same problem during secure command - the screenhad being erased if password was not sent as a parameterin emctl secure agent command.If a password is there - everything is fine, agent was secured (there is lessinformation about completion in output for that version of agent)Oracle Enterprise Manager

Heterogenous standby Windows 32-bit -> Linux 32-bit in Oracle 11g

2009-04-23T21:13:00.006+10:00

Based on Metalink Note 413484.1 physical Standby configurationis supported for mixed platforms.The configuration that attracted my attention is cascaded physical standby thatcan be configured between Windows 32-bit -> Linux 32-bit and Linux 64-bit.It can be considered as minimal downtime migration from Windows to Linuxusing switchover operations.To setup configuration I started with standby for

LargeRepository option in EM Grid Control 10.2.0.5

2009-04-10T21:29:00.005+10:00

If you have lots of targets, many jobs, getting plenty of alerts inEnterprise Manager Grid Control you possibly already setLargeRepository to true in emoms.propertiesto speed up navigation of Console.And of course you already downloaded and upgraded it to 10.2.0.5which is available for Linux 64-bit as well.The upgrade and configuration of repository would go wellbut you get error 404 after login

silent installation of Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Release 5

2009-04-08T14:42:00.011+10:00

The Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Release 5 for Linux x86-64 is outon OTN and also there is patch available on MetalinkI already installed 10.2.0.3 (full release) silently and wanted to upgradeusing the same way.There are steps clearly described in documentation how to upgradeexisting version together with post-installation actions:Installing Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control Release 5 (

silent installation of 11.1.0.7 on Linux

2009-04-01T16:10:00.007+11:00

There are Oracle installations that simplier to do in command lineand one of them is patchset installation.To start it I used ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_HOME_NAMEin addition to usual -silent -responseFile options./runInstaller -silent \-responseFile /u02/install/patch/Disk1/response/patchset.rsp \ORACLE_HOME="/u03/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1" \ORACLE_HOME_NAME="OraDb11g_home1"But the execution

silent installation of Enterprise Manager Grid Control 10.2.0.3 on Linux x86-64

2009-03-28T19:00:00.012+11:00

The first full release of Grid Control 10g rel. 2 for Linux x86-64 is 10.2.0.3To be prepared for future release 10.2.0.5 (I hope it will come soon) on x86-64I have decided to try silent installation of Grid Control using existing database.A database had been created, up and running together with listener on 1521 port.Based on contents of the response file I added variables to start silent

ORA-16401: archivelog rejected by RFS

2009-02-25T12:40:00.007+11:00

How big is your list of "known" issues for systems that you support?How many of them are related to bugs in Oracleand what portion is the "expected" behaviour that coveredby existing technical/business requirements and processes?How often do you revise the list to check of the "known" issuescan be fixed and removed from the "list"?Every time when new job is taken first months are spent just to

oracle recommended bundle patches

2009-02-06T13:17:00.004+11:00

Every time when new oracle home is installed there is a wishto apply latest patches and also some other patches to avoidas much as possible problems/errors in the future.I was installing new 10.2.0.4 oracle home recently and whilechecking Metalink I found "bundle patches" for CRS, RACand for a database in general:10.2.0.4 RAC RECOMMENDED BUNDLE #210..2.0.4 CRS BUNDLE2 TRACKING BUG10.2.0.4 GENERIC

splitting table partitions with BLOB in streams

2009-01-01T23:53:00.005+11:00

The last hours of the last day of the last year I spent trying to getcapture process of streams working.Developers executed the script that prepared application tablesfor new year splitting and rebuilding indexes on them.After that capture process was aborted due toORA-04031 for streams pool.The setting for stream_pool_size was 384M only but increase ofthe value up to 1, 2 even 5Gb did not help

orapwd and standby in 11g

2008-11-05T20:22:00.002+11:00

I was trying to build standby for Oracle 11g database to test newfeatures of Data Guard and stuck with problem that archive logs hadnot been transferred to standby side because of the following error:Error 1017 received logging on to the standby------------------------------------------------------------Check that the primary and standby are using a password fileand remote_login_passwordfile is

switching $ORACLE_BASE using oraenv in 11g

2008-11-03T21:25:00.004+11:00

I recently installed a couple of Oracle 11g on VM. First one was installedto /u01 but after testing different things I added one more to /u05.But it does not really matter, the main thing that 11g raised importanceof $ORACLE_BASE variable added it to different places - oraenv script(you have noticed sentence about oracle base after execution of the script)and as parameter to init file.All that

adrci and Data Guard logs

2008-10-29T16:30:00.004+11:00

I made an installation of Oracle 11g recently and had started to set upData Guard when got some errors during configuration. Since the newversion of databases came with Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR)I thought it might be useful and interesting to check if adrci canprovide some view of not only alert log but Data Guard log files as well.Unfortunately I did not find such possibility but at

"ORA-10388: parallel query server interrupt" for streams process

2008-10-14T15:16:00.005+11:00

It is almost a week of battle between streams process and us who support it.It failed on weekend (as usual) with bunch of errors:Errors in file /u01/oracle/admin/PROD/bdump/prod01_p001_21536.trc:ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kgh_heap_sizes:ds], [0x2A9808E358], [], [], [], [], [], []ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kgh_heap_sizes:ds], [0x2A9808E358], [], [], [], [], [], []

How to exclude ORA- errors from alerts in Grid Control

2008-09-17T20:49:00.003+10:00

There is a Note: 330996.1 on Metalink how to filtercertain alert.log errors from appearing in alerts.There is example there how to ignore certain errorsfrom coming to alerts of database.Unfortunately proposed expression doesn't work - might be somecharacters hidden in html code of the page or might be simply missed.Since it is based on regular expressions there must be clauseto ignore certain

ORA-1873 accessing the SQL_RESPONSE_COLLECT metric

2008-09-16T16:16:00.003+10:00

So you upgraded your databases to 10.2.0.4 and also recreated hc...dat file notto hang Grid Control agent, enabled health check, started agent -everything to fix consequences of bug https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=Bug&id=5872000 (see post http://dbadailytelegraph.blogspot.com/2008/08/killing-health-check.html)and executed tail -f emagent.trc to see if some errors coming -

using EM Grid Control templates to change metrics

2008-08-27T18:12:00.008+10:00

If you use EM Grid Control and have a lot of databases added there youdefinitely have templates to manage metrics depending on what type ofdatabases you monitor. And of course you apply changes not only throughGUI but using emcli as well.Are they the same? They should be but at least recently I found thatusing emcli to apply metrics works I would say more correctly and allowsto avoid some errors

"Refreshed" database files naming

2008-08-14T22:13:00.005+10:00

I have been doing many "refreshes" last days.One of scenarios is to refresh a developmentor test database from backup of production database.The databases are on ASM and names consist devor test or prod in them.Nothing difficult about it - get backup restored to disk,start instance in nomount mode, restore controlfiles,catalog backupsets, restore and recover database and open it.And rename a

wrong results for 10.2.0.4 with cursor_sharing='SIMILAR'

2008-08-12T22:20:00.004+10:00

If you running Oracle 10.2.0.4 using cursor_sharing='SIMILAR'you probably already aware about a bug that causes databaseto produce wrong results for some type of sql statements.If you have not run into it yet, try to execute the followingstatement with cursor_sharing set to SIMILAR (either on systemor session level)select t1.d1, t2.n1from(select 1 as d1 from dual d1, dual d2) t1,(select 1 as d1,

Killing health check

2008-08-07T21:19:00.000+10:00

Do you think health check can kill?Well... at least it can make oracle agent "not running" and left hungagent processes.It is not a common situation for all versions of agents and databases.The problem affects oracle agent 10.2.0.4 and either 10.2.0.3 or11.1.0.6 databases on Linux x86-64 platform.The symptoms like this: you just upgraded you agents up to10.2.0.4 version, saw fine ("green") status

Silent upgrade of Oracle Agent to 10.2.0.4

2008-08-06T18:42:00.000+10:00

Recently I got a task to upgrade RAC-awareoracle agents from 10.2.0.3 to 10.2.0.4.I presumed that installation available on OTN for massdeployments will do the trick but I failed on that assumption.Finally I recognized that upgrade should be done with patch3731593 which is available on Metalink.Due to security reasons there is only access to command lineon the server and that led me to use silent

Synchronize your bookmarks!

2008-08-05T20:48:00.000+10:00

In our days it is important for DBA to have access to variety ofinformation that is provided by different sources over Internet -forums, blogs, technical support sites etc.All information of course can be downloaded to local PCbut definitely it is simpler to make a bookmark to havea quick access to information.I personally create links for Metalink notes,for Oracle articles on OTN etc.And until

Optimisation of "SELECT * FROM"

2008-08-04T20:01:00.000+10:00

This is my first post on the blog that I created recently. The name of the blog implies to haveregular updates on the blog with articles about variety of database administration aspects.Will it happen? Well... at least it is in the name :)The first one is going to be the short one and it is about optimization of the important for everydba statement "SELECT * FROM". You probably think that I am