Author Archives: marcel

Oracle RAC – granting SYSDBA or SYSOPER is instance specific

Posted on January 9, 2012 by marcel

The default location for the password file is $ORACLE_HOME/dbs which in most cases (if you don’t have your ORACLE_HOME on a shared disk) is on a non-shared filesystem. Whenever you grant SYSDBA or SYSOPER to a database user Oracle will … Continue reading →

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ORA-00245: control file backup operation failed

Posted on January 9, 2012 by marcel

A snapshot controlfile is a read consistent copy of a database controlfile which RMAN creates because the controlfile is changed constantly. As of Oracle 11.2 (11.2.0.2 to more precise) the snapshot controlfile must be on a location shared by all … Continue reading →

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Oracle Database Appliance – Installing patch 2.1.0.1.0

Posted on January 6, 2012 by marcel

Just recently (31 December 2012) the first Patch Bundle (MOS patch name 13539664 – LNX64-112-CMT: PLACE HOLDER BUG FOR OAK PATCH 2.1.0.1.0) for the ODA was released. This Patch Bundle only contains firmware updates for the shared disks (HDD) and … Continue reading →

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Oracle Database Appliance – Inventory and Package Repostitory

Posted on January 2, 2012 by marcel

An Oracle Database Appliance has its own inventory to keep track of all installed firmware and software component versions and patches. ODA patches are released in the form of patch bundles. ODA patch bundles can contain patches for: System Firmware … Continue reading →

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Oracle Database Appliance – Appliance Manager

Posted on January 2, 2012 by marcel

The Oracle Database Appliance is sold to allow customers to quickly deploy and Oracle RAC environment using Oracle’s best practices for deployment. And it is true that in less than 2 hours (thats excluding all things that needs to be … Continue reading →

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Oracle Database Appliance – Deployment Steps

Posted on January 1, 2012 by marcel

The installation (deployment) of an Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) is done by the ODA configuration manager. After you filled out all the information in the various screens (or you have loaded a parameter file and clicked next on all the … Continue reading →

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Where does SQL*Plus look for configuation files on Solaris

Posted on September 4, 2011 by marcel

This post will show you the order in which SQL*Plus for Solaris reads the configuration files like the tnsnames.ora. tnsnames.ora $HOME/.tnsnames.ora $TNS_ADMIN/tnsnames.ora /var/opt/oracle/tnsnames.ora $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora If the specified alias is not found in (or the file does not exists) in $HOME/.tnsnames.ora … Continue reading →

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sqlnet.expire_time – to restart or not to restart

Posted on September 4, 2011 by marcel

We had a situation where we had to set the sqlnet.expire_time parameter in the sqlnet.ora file to avoid firewall dropping “inactive” sessions. The only problem was that we were not allowed to restart the listener or the database instance. Searching … Continue reading →

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Solaris SMF Oracle Grid agent service killing Oracle instance

Posted on August 22, 2011 by marcel

In the last couple of months we had some strange problems with all processes of Oracle database and ASM instances just disappearing. The shared memory segment was still there and you could connect internally to the instance, even execute some … Continue reading →

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Creating database links for another schema

Posted on August 5, 2011 by marcel

There are situations (like after cloning databases) where you, as a DBA, want to create database links in other schema’s, for which you don’t have the password. Unfortunately the security of Oracle doesn’t allow (even SYS) you to drop/create database … Continue reading →

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