Last week’s conference is the second since I joined the board of our user group. Never been more worried, but it turned out better than ever, in my not so humble opinion. I was really proud of our agenda, we had several new speakers with top content. Cary Millsap from Method R gave a keynote and two excellent presentations. This was his first time in Norway, but judging by the feedback we got he will be back soon. Actually having him here at our conference was a goal I committed to last year. Thanks, Cary, for excellent content and presentation! ...

This is a common error message after upgrade of the database: ORA-32004: obsolete or deprecated parameter(s) specified for RDBMS instance In 11g (last tested with 11.2.0.3) even if your start up the database from an old type pfile without any obsolete parameters and then create an spfile from memory like this: create spfile from memory; Oracle will insert two obsolete parameters into the spfile. This query will list obsolete parameters in your spfile: ...

After you have validated database as shown in previous post any corrupt database blocks will be reported in the view V$DATABASE_BLOCK_CORRUPTION. Now you want to find out the tables that used to have data in these blocks; those data have typically been lost if you have no backup of them or do not posses special tools like DUDE . Before you start I recommend to purge the DBA Recycle Bin if it is in use, as reported here certain queries seem to take longer time when it is not empty. Execute as SYSDBA: ...

I worked with corrupt blocks in a database a few weeks ago and decided to write three posts about it so I don’t have to rethink all of it next time it happens. Hardware and the database have improved a lot, because I rarely run into this problem. The first and obvious thing to state is that corrupt blocks in the database should be detected early by proper fault management (if you use Enterprise Manager you are good). When detected it should be fixed by using RMAN, either by command: ...

The garbage in this case is the recycle bin in the database. Just as in any tidy house you should not wait too long before you empty the garbage bin. I’ve come across two reasons to empty it. One is the ORA-3297 that is thrown when you try to downsize a data file you think have lots of free space at the end. I once wrote this SQL to find the lower limit that I can reduce the data file to: ...

Flashback database, (active) duplicate with RMAN, and tablespaces that are read-only. You can only have two out of three from my recent testing. One database with a few read-only tablespaces was cloned by using active duplicate in RMAN. Before the testing (using Real Application Testing replay) a restore point with guarantee flashback database was created. After the testing I tried to perform a flashback database, but it failed with: SQL> flashback database to restore point b4_test; flashback database to restore point b4_test * ERROR at line 1: ORA-01122: database file 38 failed verification check ORA-01110: data file 38: '+DATA/clonedb/datafile/foo_bar002.443.804434293' ORA-01207: file is more recent than control file - old control file The file in question belongs to a read-only tablespace and is certainly not newer than the control file. It looks to be a bug on 11.2.0.3 and I found a way to work around it if you take some actions before you start testing. I did not find the same error stack mentioned together with flashback, or anything directly relevant on My Oracle Support, but similar symptoms made me think the problem would go away if I set the read-only tablespaces read-write. I generated SQL with this:``` ...

This is not intended as a complete book review, but a warm recommendation of a book I’ve found very useful the last couple of months. That is, highly recommended if you are working with RAC or going to start with a RAC project soon. I have been working on and off with RAC for several years, but I don’t take any new RAC project lightly. Starting in November I was involved with a proof of concept for a large public customer. Before and during this project I have relied a lot on this book: Pro Oracle Database 11g RAC on Linux written by Steve Shaw and Martin Bach . ...

Last year was my first time at OOW. I made a write-up every day on my blog, but this year I will maximize, meaning it will be little time for blogging while being there. It is now less than four two one hours before I start on my trip OSL-SFO. Writing about what I plan to do seems like a great way to kill time. Also I’m doing some proactive jet-lag prevention research, may be staying up late will make the transition from CET to PT easier (or is it CEST and PST now?). ...

Version 4.2 of VirtualBox was released two days ago (so far for Linux only). Download it from here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads Probably not important, but I’m using Fedora 16 for the moment, and since I was running VirtualBox 4.1 I had to remove the previous package first and install the 4.2 version. This will not destroy the guest hosts. rpm -e VirtualBox-4.1 rpm -ip VirtualBox-4.2-4.2.0_80737_fedora16-1.x86_64.rpm After a new start with the VirtualBox Manager the old VM guests are in place.

This is more a note to myself… Installing Oracle on Linux has become much easier with a package that prepares the OS before installation of the Oracle Server software. In previous versions the rpm package used to be called oracle-validated, but for 11gR2 on OEL6 it is called oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall. Probably the easiest way to install the Oracle database on Linux is to install Oracle Enterprise Linux 6 and before the installation of Oracle do two things: ...