Restoring from Hot Backups?

     Many people have posted questions recently about making hot backups, but I would like to know the next step: how to recover the database from a hot backup should it be necessary. Our DBA just got us started on hot backups using the script found in the "Oracle DBA Handbook" from Oracle Press. The thing is, the book isn't very clear on how to recover a database if one restores the tape so created. Since this is new territory for us, our DBA doesn't know either; but we would like to restore a tape to another machine to verify that we will be able to recover from a crash should one occur. So, if anyone would be kind enough to post step-by-step instructions for recovery from a hot backup, we would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

• Rob -

P.S. For those who have the "Oracle DBA Handbook" and are trying or have tried the hot backup script it contains: be careful of punctuation. The line of the script which is intended to set FILES equal to the results of an ls command when you have temporarily stopped the archive logs is tricky. Because of the typeface used in the book, one might think that those little tick marks which surround the command are apostrophes when they really should be grave accents ("backquotes"). If apostrophes are used, the ls command will not be run at the right time (or at all, actually). Instead, the name "ls" AND the wild-carded archive-log name will make it to your tar command, and thus ALL archive logs will be backed up (including the ones from when you turned archive logging back on again). Another sign of this will be the message "tar: could not stat ls" in your mail after the hot backup script has run. This occurs because tar is trying to find a file "ls" in your current directory and, of course, there isn't one. Again, all of this can be prevented by looking more carefully at the script and using grave accents in the FILES= line. Of course, be sure to use apostrophes, and NOT grave accents, in the line which writes out the backup controlfile. Received on Sun Oct 08 1995 - 00:00:00 CET