RE: RMAN without a repository and a total site loss

Brandon,

Ok, this is beginning to make sense but of course leads to one additional piece which is unclear to me. As I understand it the default location for autobackup pieces is the $ORACLE_HOME/dbs directory (as I understand it that is true regardless of whether or not a catalog or the controlfile is used as the repository). If one were to do the following...

CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO '?/oradata/cf_%F';

Such that the location is no longer the default is it also unnecessary to specify the location when doing a restore from autobackup? If I am understanding you correctly it sounds like the restore from autobackup will find it wherever? I think that is the piece I am missing. Unless specified as part of the restore, how does RMAN know where to look for the piece containing the autobackups? Don't I still have to know where it is?

Thanks.

Bill Wagman
Univ. of California at Davis
IET Campus Data Center
wjwagman_at_ucdavis.edu
(530) 754-6208
-----Original Message-----
From: Allen, Brandon [mailto:Brandon.Allen_at_OneNeck.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 2:16 PM
To: William Wagman; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: RMAN without a repository and a total site loss

Bill,

I think there is a key point you may be missing. In your example you have to know that you backed up the file to '/somedisk/ctrlfile.bak' in order to restore it. In case of tape backups, you would need to know the handle of the backup piece on tape, and that information isn't always readily available, especially after a disk failure when you have lost your recovery catalog and/or control files and your backup logs.

The "restore ... from autobackup" commands can find the spfile & control file in your tape library w/o any knowledge other than your dbid.

Regards,
Brandon

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l