Hot Backup Question

I just took over DBA responsibilities for an Oracle 8i database running on Linux. Although I've been working with relational databases for some time, I'm a bit green on Oracle so forgive me.

My first task was to implement a backup strategy (currently there is none). I did a great deal of research both on this board and using the Oracle Press 8i handbook. I made a cold backup (with oracle shutdown) and sucessfully moved it from my production machine to my test machine and this works fine. My question is around "hot backups".

I sucessfully switched the database into ARCHIVELOG mode. I am then running this script (abbreviated for brevity) to back it up:

connect internal as sysdba
alter system switch logfile;
alter tablespace SYSTEM begin backup;
cp $ORACLE_DATA/system*.dbf /home/oracle/backup alter tablespace SYSTEM end backup;
...I do the above for each tablespace... archive log stop
...Run procedure to archive logfiles...
archive log start
alter database backup controlfile to
'/home/oracle/backup/controlfile.bck';

This all appears to run fine, but I have two questions on my unsuccessful restore:

#1. Something appears to be wrong with my control file backup. Upon moving the backed up files to my "test" machine, I place them in the data directory, and rename my control file backup to the correct name and run this procedure:

• I start the instance
• I mount the database
• I issue a recover database I then receive the following error:

ORA-00283: recovery session canceled due to errors ORA-01610: recovery using the BACKUP CONTROLFILE option must be done

Does anyone have any thoughts around this?

#2.

If I use 'recover database using backup controlfile', I get further, but I am prompted for an archived log that is 1 sequence number greater then I have! I checked both in my archived log area that my backup script makes as well as the "live" area on the production server.

Why would this be happening?

Thanks so much for everyone's time.

Andrew Received on Thu Nov 20 2003 - 16:24:16 CET