Re: IMP-00009: abnormal end of export file

Thanks to both you and NetComrade for replying

Export environment not under my control, was done elsewhere and placed where I could copy it local. Not sure of the platform or environment, but it was Oracle 9i, possibly a Windows 2003 server, not sure if tables were clustered, compressed, or anything like that but I suspect not, it is a development/test db, not very large. Yes, there are some longs.

I am using Oracle 9 client tools on Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server platforms.

Exact error message: IMP-00009: abnormal end of export file

Not likely to be full disk or anything like that, plenty of space. I myself was the only one using the .dmp file, so unlikely also to be multiple sessions using the same file. Except that at one point during the day my workstation did lock up for completely unknown reasons requiring a cold boot. I am pretty sure that this did NOT happen during an import attempt.

Commands used were the standard EXP with necessary switches, i.e. something like

EXP [credentials] OWNER=[ownername] FILE=[file].dmp GRANTS=y ROWS=y

and import, i.e. something like

IMP [credentials] FROMUSER=[oldusername] TOUSER=[newusername] FILE=[file].dmp ROWS=Y

I would normally expect that an import process open a dump file as read only in order to process the information, and this is what I expected Oracle was doing. However, I now suspect that for some reason or another, it must also open the file with write privileges, which puts the export file at risk.

I suppose there must be some valid reason for this, but I must say I'm glad I ran into this in a development environment rather than a production one! (Note to self: always, always keep a compressed backup of the original .dmp file. Just in case.)

It should be noted that several successful imports were already done from this same exact file over a period of several days until suddenly this error was encountered and the dmp file size shrank to about 1/3 of it's original size.

On Jun 28, 2:34 pm, NetComrade <netcomradeNS..._at_bookexchange.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:54:00 -0700, dpmartin..._at_gmail.com wrote:
> >I've been writing scripts to create necessary user and tablespace and
> >import from a .dmp file from a previously-created export and testing
> >it repeatedly on the same .dmp file. All of a sudden I started to get
> >the above message, and the size of the .dmp file was notably smaller.
> >A co-worker thought he noticed the same thing when doing repeated
> >imports on a different file a while back too. Is it possible that
> >running repeated imports from the same file could conceivably corrupt
> >it? This would be bad.
>
> Do you pipe your exports?
> .......
> We run Oracle 9iR2,10gR1/2 on RH4/RH3 and Solaris 10 (Sparc)
> remove NSPAM to email
Received on Mon Jul 02 2007 - 17:11:51 CDT