RDBMS -- how to rollforward a database using incremental backups after a failed duplicate/recovery session

In this post, I will give a quick tip about the incremental backup based recovery.
I will explain the concept by giving an example "rman duplicate" scenario.
Actually, this type of incremental backup based recovery is automatically done  by the rman duplicate command.  However, I will show you a failed automatic recovery that is supposed to be done by a rman duplicate and then, I will give you the command to roll forward the database using the incremental backups.

Suppose you started your rman duplicate work;

Rman output:

LEVEL0_DB

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_5: restore complete, elapsed time: 02:10:28

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_4: restored backup piece 12

piece handle=/BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_42248_12.bck tag=LEVEL010JUL2016_2200

LEVEL0_DB

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_4: reading from backup piece /BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_

42248_13.bck

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_7: restored backup piece 13

piece handle=/BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_42245_13.bck tag=LEVEL010JUL2016_2200

LEVEL0_DB

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_7: restore complete, elapsed time: 02:12:08

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: restored backup piece 14

piece handle=/BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_42247_14.bck tag=LEVEL010JUL2016_2200

LEVEL0_DB

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: reading from backup piece /BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_

42247_15.bck

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_4: restored backup piece 13

piece handle=/BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_42248_13.bck tag=LEVEL010JUL2016_2200

LEVEL0_DB

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_4: restore complete, elapsed time: 02:13:06

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: restored backup piece 15

piece handle=/BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_42247_15.bck tag=LEVEL010JUL2016_2200

LEVEL0_DB

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: reading from backup piece /BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_

42247_16.bck

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: restored backup piece 16

piece handle=/BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_42247_16.bck tag=LEVEL010JUL2016_2200

LEVEL0_DB

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: reading from backup piece /BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_

42247_17.bck

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: restored backup piece 17

piece handle=/BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_42247_17.bck tag=LEVEL010JUL2016_2200

LEVEL0_DB

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: reading from backup piece /BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_

42247_18.bck

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: restored backup piece 18

piece handle=/BACKUP1/LEVEL_0/PROD_LEVEL_0_42247_18.bck tag=LEVEL010JUL2016_2200

LEVEL0_DB

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: restore complete, elapsed time: 02:39:26

Finished restore at 15-JUL-16

..................

.........................

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Now suppose: after restoring the level0 backups, "rman duplicate" started to restore the incremental backups and it encountered an error , so that your duplicate db could be successfully created.

Rman output:

channel ORA_AUX_DISK_8: reading from backup piece /BACKUP1/LEVEL_1/PROD_LEVEL_1_

42328_1.bck

RMAN-00571: ===========================================================

RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============

RMAN-00571: ===========================================================

RMAN-03002: failure of Duplicate Db command at 07/15/2016 01:14:54

RMAN-03015: error occurred in stored script Memory Script

ORA-19870: error reading backup piece /BACKUP1/LEVEL_1/PROD_LEVEL_1_42327_1.bck

ORA-19505: failed to identify file "/BACKUP1/LEVEL_1/PROD_LEVEL_1_42327_1.bck"

ORA-27041: unable to open file

Linux-x86_64 Error: 13: Permission denied

Additional information: 2

The error in this example is so obvious. That is, it is a Linux permission denied error and what rman clearly says with this error is "I can't read the backup files(incremental in this case) , because I don't have the necessary filesystem permission"


At this point, if we summarize the situation we can say that:
we restored our database (level 0 backup), but it is not up-to-date.
So, we have 2 choices to roll forward the database to current time
1) archivelog apply
2) incremental backup + archivelog

In fact, if we have incremental backups for the level0 we have restored, it is more reasonable to recover our database using those incremental backup.

This is because; if the level0 was taken a long time ago and if, we choose applying all the archivelogs generated since the level0 was taken, we ll probably have to apply lots of archivelog..

So, in this case, the things that we need do for makin rman use the incremental backups for recovering our newly restored database, are as follows;

1) We fix the permission issues for the backup files (chmod or chown)
2) We connect our mountented duplicate database using rman target /
3) We register the incremental backups using catalog start with (catalog start with 'BACKUP1/LEVEL_1')
4) We execute "recover database" command.!! So here is the surprise :))) we just simple execute recover database command. So, in conclusion, Rman already knows that, it is better to recover a database using incremental backups if they are available :)
5)We apply the archivelogs, which could be created since the time that we have taken our level1 backup, to make our database consistent and up-to-date. (Remember all the backups -- "including rman backups", which are taken while the databases are open, are inconsistent)