moving database on raw devices

I am attempting to move a database created on raw devices. The server is Oracle 8.1.6. All the datafiles are operating system links to the raw devices. Of the logfiles, each first member is also an operating system link to a raw device. Each second member is a regular file. All the control files are regular files.

We thought that since the datafiles are all links, we could shutdown the database and do a block-by-block copy of each raw device, re-link to those new raw devices, startup the database and be back in business. However, after going through this process, we got the following message on startup and couldn't open the database:

ORA-01157 cannot identify/lock data file 1 - see DBWR trace ORA-01110 data file 1: STRING CONTAINING DATAFILE PATH

I looked up the error messages and it says ORA-01157
Cause: The background process was either unable to find one of the data files or failed to lock it because the file was already in use. The database will prohibit access to this file but other files will be unaffected. However, the first instance to open the database will need to access all online data files. The accompanying error from the operating system describes why the file could not be identified.

Action: At the operating system level, make the file available to the database. Then either open the database or do an ALTER SYSTEM CHECK DATAFILES. ORA-01110 is only the message to identify exactly which datafile is not being accessed.

I attempted the ALTER SYSTEM CHECK DATAFILES command. It indicated that it completed, but did not solve my problem. We were out of time for the job for which we obtained permission to have downtime, so we put everything back the way it was and decided to get some more information before trying it again.

The datafile on which I got the error was the system datafile. When I did a query on V$DATAFILE, everything showed as ONLINE except this file, which showed as SYSTEM. I'm not absolutely sure that the other files are really okay or whether the SYSTEM datafile couldn't be recognized by the database and it just didn't really know whether the other files could be recognized.

A couple of issues I'm wondering about:

Would it make any difference if the links were created by root or by the oracle account?

Would it make more sense to make the new raw devices connect to a new link and to do an ALTER DATABASE RENAME DATAFILE instead?

Can you think of any other reason why this would have failed?

We're under some pretty serious time pressure. I'd appreciate any information any of you can offer.

Thanks,

Bonnie Received on Sat Dec 09 2000 - 08:44:01 CST