Re: Cold backup blues (UNIX)...

In article <4vvefp$snu_at_news.missouri.edu>, pixel_at_coe.missouri.edu wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm running Oracle 7.1 on an SGI running IRIX 5.3

7.2.3 on HP-UX 9.01 here.

> Every night at 4am I take down Oracle and do a cold backup. This
> process normally takes about 30 minutes.
>
> Unfortunately last night Oracle didn't shut down properly, so when I
> came into work the backup script was still running (waiting for Oracle
> to shutdown). I'm wondering if I should be doing something different.

[...]

> This script has been working for a couple of months. But sometimes
> Oracle just doesn't shut down.
>
> Should I be bringing Oracle down differently? Any suggestions
> appreciated.

Sometimes, "shutdown immediate" doesn't seem to work--Oracle hangs trying to shut down. The datafiles get backed up--I'm not sure how much I trust their integrity in this state--and when that happens, the startup fails and the backup script is still going...

This is how you should be doing cold backups (with shutdown immediate), according to Oracle people I've talked with. When the problem occurs, I have to kill the script, shutdown abort, and then startup. (I usually shutdown normal and startup again for good measure.)

Some don't recommend it, but if it's a recurring problem, you could replace a shutdown immediate with a shutdown abort, startup and shutdown normal (or immediate).

It happens here so infrequently (about one every month or two on a nightly cold backup), so I don't bother. People just have to be careful when they do stuff on the database, because the last good cold backup will be two days old on those days. :)

-- 
Tim Irvin, HP-UX System Administrator / Oracle DBA
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space, Sunnyvale, California
e-mail: irvin_at_lmsc.lockheed.com    voice:  (408) 742-0440
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