TheBonsai's Blog

Hi there,

I was analyzing some unexpected RMAN termination, a RMAN-10038/RMAN-03009 combo:

RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-03009: Fehler bei REFAF Befehl in c13 Kanal auf 10/31/2011 08:21:50
RMAN-10038: Datenbank-Session für Kanal c13 unerwartet beendet

Nothing, not even an RMAN tracing was able to reveal more hints. The trace just told it in other words. No underlying ORA/TNS error or similar.

It finally turned out it were some parameters recently added to sqlnet.ora, I set SQLNET.RECV_TIMEOUT and SQLNET.SEND_TIMEOUT and the beast silently dropped RMAN channels that were idle for a while. The next command in this channel blew up the whole RUN block of the backup script.

I removed the parameters and it works again.

Be careful with your sqlnet.ora

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (dmr) passed away some days ago.

dmr is widely known primarily as one of the Unix and C fathers. He’s also the co-author of the famous “K&R” book, “The C programming language”.

From my point of view the IT world lost a great man whose echo still lives on in many technologies. I would also like to pass on my condolences to his family and friends.

SQL*Plus connect strings/logon strings have a couple of special characters, notably these two:

• / (slash) to separate username and password
• @ (at) to separate the TNS descriptor string

If you need to use those characters literally in the logon string, you need to tag them with literal double quotes (literal means: the quotes need to be passed to SQL*Plus, I’m not talking about the UNIX shell):

• Less readable:

  $ sqlplus USER/\"PASS/WORD\"

• More readable:

  $ sqlplus USER/'"PASS/WORD"'