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Lesson 2 Starting RMAN with a recovery catalog
Objective Issue the command to start RMAN.

Starting RMAN with a Recovery Catalog

In this lesson, you will explore the command options to start RMAN with a recovery catalog. The examples in this lesson demonstrate command-line options. Backup Manager provides similar options. The basic syntax to start RMAN is:

RMAN target < string > [rcvcat  < string > | cmdfile < string > | 
msglog < string > | append | nocatalog]

You must have SYSDBA privilege to start RMAN. The entries in the brackets are optional. The <string>; entries are quoted using either single or double quotes or may be entered with no quotes. The table below identifies each of the <string>; options.

Argument Description of <string> Example of <string>
target The connect string to the target database with username/password. 'scott/tiger@prod'
rcvcat The connect string to the database containing the recovery catalog, including username/password. 'rman/rman@recv'
cmdfile The file containing input commands to operate RMAN in batch mode. 'C:\oracle8\database\backup.txt'
msglog RMAN commands and output will appear on the screen or in the log file specified with this argument. 'C:\oracle8\rman\output.txt'
append This keyword will cause the messages generated by RMAN to be appended to an existing log file. Without this keyword, the default is to overwrite the file.  
nocatalog This keyword allows you to start RMAN without specifying a recovery catalog. This type of operation is explained in the next lesson.  

Example 1

For the images that follow, you will be connecting to a local database and recovery catalog. The database is orc1, which you also use to store your recovery catalog. An alias, mydb, has been established for orc1. This has been done because the command string expects an alias for the recovery catalog.
In the first example, you will connect to the target database and recovery catalog on the same command line. Your database is orc1, so use system/manager as the username/password combination. Then you need to connect to the recovery catalog with rman/rman as the username/password combination. In this instance, you use the alias mydb to specify a local database orc1.

rman80 target system/manager@mydb rcvcat rman/rman@mydb
rman80 target system/manager@mydb rcvcat rman/rman@mydb

Example 2

In the second example, you will connect to the recovery catalog and then connect to the database while in RMAN. Use the same connection information as in example 1.

rman80 rcvcat rman/rman@mydb
rman80 rcvcat rman/rman@mydb

What happens at startup

After typing in your RMAN command, the following activities occur:
  1. A user process is created for Recovery Manager.
  2. The user process creates two Oracle Server processes that connect to the target database:

1. A default process, which will execute the SQL commands, resynchronize the control file, and roll forward the redo logs
2. A polling process per instance
  1. A server process is created to access the recovery catalog.

As you start executing your backup commands, the Oracle Server processes that talk to your output device (disk or tape) will be created.
There are times where you may come across a difficult Oracle issue that really is a very simple problem.
In the next lesson, you will execute RMAN without the recovery catalog.