exnirad@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au (Nirad Sharma) (11/19/90)
Panic. Panic. My oracle V5 db (SCO Xenix 2.3.2) went down and won't come back. Before the inevitable questions of backups, I was backing up daily until about a month ago when I had to disable the automatic backups due to a timer problem. I have been unable to back up since due to SEVERE time shortages. Given that this has occurred, here is what happened and what I have done (to possibly mess it up more.) I arrived at work after a prolonged break from it to find that my machine had crashed. Upon restarting the system, it claimed that Oracle would not restart due to a bad header block. dbfsize reported my db file okay but my bi (before image) file had a bad magic number. I immediately made a backup (dd) of my dbs file (a raw device). (I still have this backup.) (This is where I start taking possibly incorrect measures.) This had occurred once before in the past. I re-ccf'ed the bi file and warm booted (ior w) oracle - it worked fine. I tried this again but this time oracle claimed that the bi file had no control block. "IOR: ORA-0421: cannot recover; no before image control block found" (Now a step that may have been REALLY stupid... ) Realising that the bi file that existed at the time of the crash was now gone and that the dbs file was already tucked away on many cartridges and alternate hard disk partitions, I thought I might be able to fool oracle by initialising the whole system again (ior i), shut it down (ior s), copying back the old dbs file and bringing oracle back up (ior w). I expected oracle to give some sort of warning concerning the bi file but thought it would (as it had before) clear the error. I would then exp the database and recover my situation. Instead, I'm horrified to get the following message : "IOR: ORA-0422: cannot recover; before image range not open" Is there any way of recovering this db ? What steps do I take, if any ? If it is beyond my command, can oracle support restore a image copy of a database ? (I'm pretty sure that the actual dbs file is not corrupt.) Help !!! I have users breathing down my neck. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Nirad Sharma (exnirad@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au) Continuing Education Unit The University of Queensland AUSTRALIA