So, did I do good? (Did my first Oracle recovery, seems good... thoughts?)

Wow, am I glad I implemented archivelog mode on our old Oracle 7.3 server! Here's what happened- did I do good?

Our Novell server was frozen this morning... had to hit the reset key
(yikes). When Oracle tried to come up, got message similar to:

ORA-1113: file 11 needs media recovery
(listed file name)

So first, I copied the bad file out to another directory, deleted it from the database directory- and promptly wondered if I deleted the right file.
(Didn't write the filename down.) I did a startup mount, queried
v$datafile, and yes, I had the right filename for file 11. Dismounted/shutdown Oracle, and started restoring the file from tape. Then I realized I should've done a cold backup of the bad database first. I deleted the "restored" file, moved the original bad file Back to the database directory, and did a backup. Only problem- now the file I had moved out and moved back in had a different time stamped on it then the rest of the data files.

After the "get a backup before I do any worse damage" job was done, I realized that the Novell server was still out of whack... some digging uncovered a corrupt license file. No wonder that non-Oracle users couldn't get to their files! I couldn't even get to Oracle files! So I fixed the license file, and was able to log in and see all my directories again.

I figured I'd leave the "original" file 11, the one that needed "media recovery", in the database directory, and see what I could do with it.

I went to the database, and did a startup mount. Checked v$datafile to make sure that none of last night's tablespaces were still in backup mode. They weren't... that'd be too easy.

So I said alter database open; again, hoping for success... of course, none... same ora-1113 error.

So I did a recover database, and hit enter on the suggested redo logs. Oracle applied 5 of them, and finished.

I did a shutdown immediate, and then a startup- no errors. Did a query of v$datafile, and everything came up okay. I did a query on one of our tables with a timestamp field, and had current entries from the morning.

I just did another shutdown immediate, and I'm taking a full cold "after recovery" backup as I type this.

I'm hesitant to let anybody back on yet... everybody's gone home so I can do a few more queries to see if the data's okay. Did I do good or bad by not bringing out an old file #11 from tape? Even though Oracle wanted media recovery on the file, I bet it probably just had an SCN that wasn't in sync with everything else; and by doing a recover database, Oracle was able to sync the SCN with everything else.

But that's just my guess. Did I guess right? Or should I restore everything from my "get a backup of the bad database" set, then go to an old tape to restore my last "good" copy of file #11, and then do a recover database?

Hopefully I didn't make that confusing... basically, I'm wondering if I should've brought file 11 from it's last good hot-backup, or if it was okay to have performed recovery on the "needs media recovery" file.

Thanks!

-Thomas Received on Wed Oct 01 2003 - 16:19:12 CDT