Re: shutdown immediate or abort for cold-backup?

I'm reluctant to get involved in what looks like becoming a minor flame war but I hope my comments may add value.

I thought it was standard practice (and is certainly advice from Oracle) to do the following for batch shutdowns:

1. Shutdown abort
2. Startup normal (probably best in restricted mode)
3. Shutdown normal

Discussion:

1. Although I have always been warned clear of shutdown aborts, I have never had any subsequent problems. In fact, if you think about it, a shutdown abort is no different from a shutdown immediate except that the rollback of active processes occurs on recovery (at startup) rather than as part of the shutdown process.
2. by doing the three-step approach, the backup is taken after a normal shutdown and, therefore, should give clean results. If a problem *were* to result from the abort, by building enough checks into the script (return code and check for ORA- errors), you can abort the backup and raise warnings immediately.
3. the one clear broblem in backing up an aborted shutdown is that, if you ever need to recover the database, you will always have to recover from the abort (which you have captured on tape). By clearing the recovery on step 2, you have a nice clean shutdown to recover from.

Len

>There is no effective difference wrt database corruption between:
>
>shutdown abort
>startup restrict
>shutdown immediate
>
>and
>
>shutdown abort
>backup the database
>restore the database
>startup restrict
>shutdown immediate
>
>What you are actually saying is that ANY use of shutdown abort carries the
>risk of corrupting the database. It's not much of a database if that is the
>case.
>
>"Thomas Kyte" <tkyte_at_us.oracle.com> wrote in message
>news:8096153.0000d289.015_at_drn.newsguy.com...
>> In article <pXhf7.2923$0z.44549_at_news11-gui.server.ntli.net>, "Keith
>says...
>> >
>> >> You should not trust in a backup after a shutdown abort.
>> >
>> >Bollocks
>> >
>> >
>>
>> you know, just because something appears to work in a test or two does not
>mean
>> that it works and is the right, proper thing to do....
>>
>> Ok, to be more clear:
>>
>> you should not trust a backup after a shutdown abort without a
>startup/shutdown
>> normal|immediate when in archivelog mode.
>>
>> A shutdown abort can result in fractured blocks. A fractured block is
>where the
>> head != tail of the block. In hot backup mode, we take special pains to
>avoid
>> this issue by logging additional information to the online redo log. This
>> additional information won't be there in this case. Media recovery could
>fail
>> (not will, could -- do you want to risk it? I don't)
>>
>> If you are in archivelog mode, don't shutdown abort and copy those
>files... do
>> a startup/shutdown normal|immediate and then copy them.
>>
>> If you are in noarchivelog mode -- make sure to backup your online redo if
>you
>> do this (this is the ONLY time ever that you should -- nay have to -- back
>them
>> up, normally it is an error to back them up)
>>
>> --
>> Thomas Kyte (tkyte@us.oracle.com) http://asktom.oracle.com/
>> Expert one on one Oracle, programming techniques and solutions for Oracle.
>> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1861004826/
>> Opinions are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Oracle Corp
>>
>
>
Received on Sat Aug 18 2001 - 06:39:19 CDT