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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> Re[2]: Big Whoops
Rachel,
Many a year ago, My father instructed me that every one makes mistakes, but "it takes a man to admit to them" (I'll add woman to that too or is it more politically correct to say adult). Hopefully most of us fall into the adult category, BUT let me drop a situation on all of you that did happen 4 years ago (somehow it fits several posts from the past month).
At the time our company had a partner in Japan. We had acquired and configured a DEC 5000/240 workstation to run a program for them that basically ran the entire assembly line (they had one line). The application ran on top of Oracle V6, so that had been installed as well. The Japanese company had sent two individuals over for about 2 months of training on both the application and Oracle. One of the individuals spent three weeks at Oracle and two weeks at DEC training in Japan before coming to the US. We did our training with them & had them running a virtual line very well. In the end they returned to Japan & the DEC workstation followed shortly thereafter. Things were fine for several months with their assembly line happily producing about 125% of expectations regularly. Everyone was happy & pleased with the deal.
One day we received a call that there was a problem with the application we had shipped, but no one knew what the problem was. The Japanese company informed our management that the problems had been discussed internally & that they believed some of the data we had recently provided was in error. They were in the process of correcting the errors & would let us know what they found in a week of so. Several weeks passed with no further word. Then late one evening (EST in the US) I received a call at home from the Japanese individual who had been trained by DEC & Oracle. To say he was not totally calm would be an understatement. He had to run the application in the next few hours as the line was running out of work. The problem was that the database was dead and the Ultrix OS was really messed up, Could I please help. Well, modem time from New Hampshire to Japan is NOT cheap, but I dialed in and started looking around. The mount point where Oracle was suppose to be was completely full & the tail of the alert log looked like a real mess. Something about a shutdown abort & then the RBS file was no longer available???
The individual privately admitted to having removed the RBS file from the file system by accident, shutting down the database with the abort qualifier immediately after seeing what he had done. He then tried to restore the file from his backups, but those were over 6 months old & by accident he had copied as much as possible of the tape into the /ora directory thereby filling the file system. At this point he was in a minor panic & did not want any of this to reach his boss.
In the end our SA & I were able to patch things back up & get them going, but we did not hear from this individual for more than a year. I for one was rather worried considering.
Dick Goulet
Senior Oracle DBA
Vicor Corporation
____________________Reply Separator____________________Subject: Re: Big Whoops
Lisa,
I use stories like this to illustrate what I can do... "yes, I'm human and I make mistakes BUT I can clean up after myself. And handle problems competently."
I will not do my rant on OCP here (I'm bored with it so I'm working on the assumption everyone else here is too), but I didn' start ranting until after I had taken tests and realized just how worthless they were.
Glad you are back to normal (or as normal as things get)
Rachel
>From: Lisa_Koivu_at_gelco.com
>Reply-To: ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com
>To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
>Subject: Re: Big Whoops
>Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 05:37:59 -0800
>
>Hi Rachel,
>
>Well, thanks for the vote of confidence. No backups. Ran a series of
>scripts
>all last night and my database is back .
>Now I get to choose whether or not I tell anyone I did this :) I think my
>fellow DBA will get a kick out of it.
>
>to add to the irony, the db I was creating was a test recovery catalog.
>
>Yea, OCP = Obsessive-Compulsive Pinhead. It's funny that you don't realize
>how
>worthless it is until you get through the exams and find out they ask you
>much
>too simple questions. And I paid for this? Oh well.
>
>Have a great day.
>Lisa
>
>
>
>
>
>"Rachel Carmichael" <carmichr_at_hotmail.com> on 05/24/2000 09:16:11 PM
>
>Please respond to ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com
>
>To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
>cc: (bcc: Lisa Koivu/GELCO)
>
>
>
>
>Lisa,
>
>You have backups? Restore from backup. Otherwise..... recreate and import
>is
>the way to go.
>
>I gotta say, the fact that you did this, figured out how to fix it, and
>didn't freak out about it, would impress me MUCH more on an interview than
>the fact that you have your OCP :)
>
>Rachel
>
>
> >From: Lisa_Koivu_at_gelco.com
> >Reply-To: ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com
> >To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
> >Subject: Big Whoops
> >Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 14:44:29 -0800
> >
> >This is by far the funniest thing I have ever done. I began running the
> >create
> >database scripts (ON A TEST MACHINE) when the $ORACLE_SID was set to a
> >currently
> >running database. It's now completely and totally hosed. I'm just
> >wondering if
> >there is any possible way of recovering from this. I am just recreating
> >the
> >database and reimporting the data - it's not a big deal, but for future
> >reference, I wonder if this really does mean THE END OF THE DATABASE AS
>WE
> >KNOW
> >IT. My gut feel is YES.
> >
> >I just can't stop laughing. I finish my OCP exams and completely TRASH a
> >large
> >database in the same day (and dump pink ice cream on my white sweater
> >simultaneously)! Like Kirti said, Who *WANTS* to be a DBA? Are you out
>of
> >your
> >mind? you better be!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >--
> >Author:
> > INET: Lisa_Koivu_at_gelco.com
> >
> >Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051
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>________________________________________________________________________
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>--
>Author: Rachel Carmichael
> INET: carmichr_at_hotmail.com
>
>Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051
>San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
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>
>
>
>
>--
>Author:
> INET: Lisa_Koivu_at_gelco.com
>
>Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051
>San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
>to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
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>(or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may
>also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
-- Author: Rachel Carmichael INET: carmichr_at_hotmail.com Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051 San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists -------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and inReceived on Fri May 26 2000 - 09:48:17 CDT
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