How to catalog backup located on TAPE in RMAN?
August 31, 2012 2 Comments
If you are using Symantec Netbackup as a backup server, the following command will be useful for you:
1. To list available files located on tape taken by some client, run the following:
# /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/bplist -C r2n1 -t 4 -l -R /
where,
-C client name
-t is a policy type , where 4 means Oracle
-l shows more details info
-R recursively
/ root directory
–output
-rw-rw---- oracle oinstall 18939648K Aug 11 04:48 /al_dMEDIA_s3941_p1_t791009326_T20120811
2. In my case this backuppiece is taken by r2n1 client and now I am cataloging it on orcl client. That’s why I need to pass additional parameters to channel. If these clients are the same , parameters are not necessary. (If you have some problem, like orcl can’t see r2n1’s backups see my post about alternate client)
RMAN> CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE 'SBT_TAPE' PARMS 'ENV=(NB_ORA_CLIENT=r2n1,NB_ORA_SERV=JUS-BACKUP01)'; RMAN> catalog device type 'SBT_TAPE' backuppiece 'al_dMEDIA_s3941_p1_t791009326_T20120811';
3. If you want to clear your configuration do the following,or skip this step.
CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE 'SBT_TAPE' CLEAR;
That’s all, good luck!
About Mariami Kupatadze
DBA Knowledge Base 
We take any backup through RMAN, in the repository information of the backup is recorded. It can be either controlfile or recovery catalog. if I take a backup through OS command then RMAN does not aware of that and hence recorded are not reflected in the repository. This is also true whenever we create a new control file taken by RMAN is transferred to another place using OS command then control file catalog does not know about the prior backups of the database.
Add information of backup pieces and image copies in the repository that are on disk.
Record a datafile copy as a level 0 incremental backup in the RMAN repository.
Record of a datafile copy that was taken by OS.
It can’t do the following.
Can’t catalog a file that belong to different database.
Can’t catalog a backup piece that exists on an sbt device.
Yes oracle can’t catalog files that belongs to another database and as I remember if you re-create controlfile with “SET DATABASE” (not reuse)or resetlogs option you are not able to catalog backups taken before that recreation. But in my case I have two oracle servers: r2n1 and orcl. orcl is restored from r2n1 backup. So controlfile that was in r2n1 backup and is now on orcl server can catalog backups taken(by r2n1) after that controlfile creation.