Oracle RMAN Pocket Reference

Executing RMAN Commandsfrom the RMAN Prompt

The most basic way of executing RMAN commands is to type them in manually from the RMAN command-line prompt. In fact, we recommend that you become familiar with this method. There are two good reasons for learning how to type in commands manually:

• Concepts are reenforced.

• It may be the only option available during a backup and recovery scenario.

In other words, don’t rely on a tool for backup and recovery if you don’t understand the underlying command syntax. You don’t want to be caught in a situation in which you’re responsible for a recovery but do not know how to compose ad hoc RMAN commands. Here’s a simple example of how to do a full disk-based backup of datafiles by typing in the commands manually:

$ rman nocatalog

Recovery Manager: Release 9.0.1.0.0 - Production

RMAN> connect target /

connected to target database: BRDSTN (DBID=3662736385)
using target database controlfile instead of recovery catalog

RMAN> run {allocate channel d1 type disk;
2> backup full format '/ora01/backup/rman_%d_%U.bus'
3> database;}

This performs a full database backup of datafiles to a local disk in the /ora01/backup directory.

The target must be in archivelog mode before running an on-line backup. Here’s an example of how to alter a database into archivelog mode:

SQL> connect sys/heeraa as sysdba;
SQL> alter database archivelog;

Even when simple tasks complete successfully, RMAN presents you with a voluminous information stack. When typing in commands manually, ...