Creating Controlfile From Scratch when No Backup is Available

You have lost the controlfile, the catalog and the backup to the controlfile too; so restoring the controlfile from a previous backup is not an option. How can you recover the database? By creating the controlfile from scratch. Interested in learning how? Read on.

How to Get the DBID when Instance in in NOMOUNT State

You lost your controlfile and the catalog. To restore the controlfile, you must know the DBID. Did you follow the advise to write down the DBID in a safe place? You didn't, did you? Well, what do you do next? Don't worry; you can still get the DBID from the header of the data files. Read on to learn how.

Restoring Controlfile When AUTOBACKUP Fail

Allow me to present the snapshot of a day from the life of John--the DBA at Acme Bank. On this particular day a database John manages crashed entirely and had to be restored from the backup. He takes regular (backupset) RMAN backups to tape. Since everything--including the controlfile--had crashed, John had to first restore the controlfile and then restore the database. The controlfile is always backed up with the backup database command. John was sure of that. However, restore controlfile from autobackup gave the error:

RMAN-06172: no AUTOBACKUP found or specified handle is not a valid copy or piece

Without the controlfile, the recovery was stuck, even though all the valid pieces were there. It was a rather alarming situation. Others would have panicked; but not John. As always, he managed to resolve the situation by completing recovery. Interested to learn how? Read on.