Question: RMAN 10g TSPITR - Keeps failing

Hi, all.

I'm working through a bunch of scenarios in RMAN 10g (AIX5.2). I've done backups, restores, partial recoveries, all work fine.

I'm trying to do TSPITR. I'm unable to get RMAN to restore only to a specific point in time; best I can do is to get it to restore to the time of the last incremental backup.

Steps taken:

1. Set up the auxiliary instance;
2. Set the nls_date_format variable in the environment with "set nls_date_format=YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS"
3. Logged into RMAN target and aux instance (not using catalog);
4. Ran a full backup, and a series of 6 incremental level 1 backups (from 11:45am to 11:55am). The first of these was the same size as the full, which I'd expected; the remainder were much smaller
5. tried to run a TSPITR with an until time clause:

RUN
{
  sql "alter session set nls_date_format=''YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS''";   set until time '2005-12-01 11:54:00';
  ALLOCATE CHANNEL c1 DEVICE TYPE disk;
  RECOVER TABLESPACE RMAN_TS;
}

Result:

RMAN-03002: failure of recover command at 12/01/2005 12:59:08
RMAN-06555: datafile 13 must be restored from backup created before
2005-12-01 11:54:00

The only way I can get it to proceed is to set the until time to 11:56:00 - which is the time of the _last_ incremental backup. This defeats the purpose of TSPITR, as I should be able to restore to the point of any of the incrementals (or so I thought).

I am quite sure the nls_date_format is working, because when I do a 'list backup', the Completion Time format matches the format of my declared date format. Also, I used the same date_format syntax for the incomplete recovery, and it worked fine - it allowed me to recover the db to the point of one specific incremental backup in the series.

I hope I've supplied enough information to be reasonably clear.

Any ideas out there?

I am slowly grinding through the online docs on download-west.oracle.com. Hopefully someone out there can see my error/omission and point me in the right direction.

Thanks!!

BD Received on Thu Dec 01 2005 - 14:13:17 CST