This post is related to 12c and an active database duplication for a standby I did in my lab environment. I’d say although I first encountered it on 12c there is a chance you run into a similar situation with earlier releases too.
I would normally use ASM for all my databases to make my life easier but this time I had to be mindful of the available memory on the laptop-which at 8 GB-is not plenty. So I went with file system setup instead. After the initial preparations I was ready to launch the one-liner on the standby database:
RMAN> duplicate target database for standby from active database;
This worked away happily for a few moments only to come to an abrupt halt with the below error message. I have started the duplication process on the standby.
... executing command: SET NEWNAME executing command: SET NEWNAME Starting backup at 01-APR-14 using channel ORA_DISK_1 channel ORA_DISK_1: starting datafile copy input datafile file number=00012 name=/u01/oradata/CDB1/valid/sysaux01.dbf RMAN-03009: failure of backup command on ORA_DISK_1 channel at 04/01/2014 20:34:42 ORA-17628: Oracle error 19505 returned by remote Oracle server ORA-19505: failed to identify file "" channel ORA_DISK_1 disabled, job failed on it will be run on another channel RMAN-00571: =========================================================== RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS =============== RMAN-00571: =========================================================== RMAN-03002: failure of Duplicate Db command at 04/01/2014 20:34:42 RMAN-05501: aborting duplication of target database RMAN-03015: error occurred in stored script Memory Script RMAN-03009: failure of backup command on ORA_DISK_1 channel at 04/01/2014 20:34:42 ORA-17628: Oracle error 19505 returned by remote Oracle server ORA-19505: failed to identify file ""
Huh? File 12 is part of a PDB named VALID. It was definitely available on the file system on the source, and I even had a backup on disk for it… I first thought it had to do with the PDBs all closed on the source datbase but that was not the case. After opening the PDBs read-write I still had the same error. Strange. I thought about debugging and tracing RMAN but then decided to first try the duplication from the primary. Which was a good idea, because the primary actually gave me a more meaningful error message:
Starting restore at 19.03.2014 10:17:08 using channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1 channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1: starting datafile backup set restore channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1: using network backup set from service cdb1 channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1: specifying datafile(s) to restore from backup set channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1: restoring datafile 00004 to /u01/oradata/STDBY1/undotbs01.dbf channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1: restore complete, elapsed time: 00:00:25 channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1: starting datafile backup set restore channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1: using network backup set from service cdb1 channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1: specifying datafile(s) to restore from backup set channel ORA_AUX_DISK_1: restoring datafile 00005 to /u01/oradata/STDBY1/pdbseed/system01.dbf RMAN-00571: =========================================================== RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS =============== RMAN-00571: =========================================================== RMAN-03002: failure of Duplicate Db command at 03/19/2014 10:17:26 RMAN-05501: aborting duplication of target database RMAN-03015: error occurred in stored script Memory Script ORA-19849: error while reading backup piece from service cdb1 ORA-19504: failed to create file "/u01/oradata/STDBY1/pdbseed/system01.dbf" ORA-27040: file create error, unable to create file Linux-x86_64 Error: 2: No such file or directory Additional information: 1
So I forgot to create the needed directories on the standby. For consistency I created a subdirectory per PDB on the primary, which I forgot on the standby host. You can see this here:
RMAN> report schema; Report of database schema for database with db_unique_name CDB1 List of Permanent Datafiles =========================== File Size(MB) Tablespace RB segs Datafile Name ---- -------- -------------------- ------- ------------------------ 1 790 SYSTEM *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/system01.dbf 3 750 SYSAUX *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/sysaux01.dbf 4 90 UNDOTBS1 *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/undotbs01.dbf 5 250 PDB$SEED:SYSTEM *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/pdbseed/system01.dbf 6 5 USERS *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/users01.dbf 7 590 PDB$SEED:SYSAUX *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/pdbseed/sysaux01.dbf 11 270 VALID:SYSTEM *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/valid/system01.dbf 12 610 VALID:SYSAUX *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/valid/sysaux01.dbf 13 260 RCAT:SYSTEM *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/rcat/system01.dbf 14 610 RCAT:SYSAUX *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/rcat/sysaux01.dbf 15 100 RCAT:RMAN_CATALOG *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/rcat/rman_catalog01.dbf 16 50 VALID:USERS *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/valid/users01.dbf 17 250 DGTEST:SYSTEM *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/dgtest/system01.dbf 18 590 DGTEST:SYSAUX *** /u01/oradata/CDB1/dgtest/sysaux01.dbf List of Temporary Files ======================= File Size(MB) Tablespace Maxsize(MB) Tempfile Name ---- -------- -------------------- ----------- -------------------- 1 60 TEMP 32767 /u01/oradata/CDB1/temp01.dbf 2 20 PDB$SEED:TEMP 32767 /u01/oradata/CDB1/pdbseed/pdbseed_temp01.dbf 4 20 VALID:TEMP 32767 /u01/oradata/CDB1/valid/pdbseed_temp01.dbf 5 20 RCAT:TEMP 32767 /u01/oradata/CDB1/rcat/pdbseed_temp01.dbf 6 20 DGTEST:TEMP 32767 /u01/oradata/CDB1/dgtest/dgtest_temp01.dbf
All right, after creating the directories I retried the duplication and it worked:
... datafile 4 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=5 STAMP=843771196 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/undotbs01.dbf datafile 5 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=6 STAMP=843771198 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/pdbseed/system01.dbf datafile 6 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=7 STAMP=843771198 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/users01.dbf datafile 7 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=8 STAMP=843771199 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/pdbseed/sysaux01.dbf datafile 11 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=9 STAMP=843771199 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/valid/system01.dbf datafile 12 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=10 STAMP=843771199 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/valid/sysaux01.dbf datafile 13 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=11 STAMP=843771199 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/rcat/system01.dbf datafile 14 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=12 STAMP=843771200 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/rcat/sysaux01.dbf datafile 15 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=13 STAMP=843771200 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/rcat/rman_catalog01.dbf datafile 16 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=14 STAMP=843771200 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/valid/users01.dbf datafile 17 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=15 STAMP=843771200 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/dgtest/system01.dbf datafile 18 switched to datafile copy input datafile copy RECID=16 STAMP=843771200 file name=/u01/oradata/STDBY1/dgtest/sysaux01.dbf Finished Duplicate Db at 19.03.2014 10:28:42
Summary
Although not a big problem and probably known by everyone besides me the error message on the standby shouldn’t be of the scary type ‘can’t identify datafile “”‘ followed by the process aborting. Instead something more meaningful would have been nice.
