Cataloging backups and recovering an Oracle Database from the OCI object store

   This is the fourth and final post of a multi-part blog series walking through how to copy your TDE encrypted on premise Oracle Database to an OCI instance in the oracle cloud. This blog post will focus on how to restore your database from the object store, when the backup pieces are not available from your controlfile. 

There a few reasons why this might be the case.

• The backups were written to the ZDLRA directly.
• You are using an RMAN catalog, and they have aged off the controlfile.
• They are "keep" backups which will be stored in the RMAN catalog.
• You had to rebuild the controlfile, and lost history of backups.

Whatever the reason, there is way to find out what backups are in the Object for your database, and you will be able to catalog them.

NOTE: You can use this same script to delete old backups directly if you've lost your catalog entries.

When you download the Oracle Cloud Backup installation zip file, and execute the "oci_install.jar" command to download the library you will find 5 extra files in the /lib directory with the "libopc.so" file that is used by the RMAN channel. The 2 we are going to use are 

• odbsrmt.py             --> python script to manage the contents of the object store bucket
• python_readme.txt --> Documentation for how to use the above python script.

Step #1 Execute odbsrmt.py to get a listing of your backup pieces.

NOTE: The python script uses python 2.x and will not work with python 3.x.  Python 3.x is typically the default version in your path, and you might have to find the 2.x version on your system. For my system this means executing "python2" rather than "python"

If I execute the script without any parameters, I can see what parameters are expected.

[oracle@oracle-19c-test-tde lib]$ python2 odbsrmt.py
usage: odbsrmt.py [-h] --mode
                  {report,rman-listfile,garbage-collection,delete,recall}
                  [--ocitype {classic,swift,bmc,archive}]
                  [--credential CREDENTIAL] [--token TOKEN] --host HOST
                  [--base BASE] [--forcename FORCENAME]
                  [--format {text,xml,json}] [--dbid DBID]
                  [--container CONTAINER] [--dir DIR] [--prefix PREFIX]
                  [--untildate UNTILDATE] [--exclude_deferred]
                  [--thread THREAD] [--proxyhost PROXYHOST]
                  [--proxyport PROXYPORT] [--tocid TOCID] [--uocid UOCID]
                  [--pubfingerprint PUBFINGERPRINT] [--pvtkeyfile PVTKEYFILE]
                  [--skip_check_status] [--debug]
odbsrmt.py: error: argument --mode is required

Now let's go through the most common parameters I am going to use to report on my backups

And now to execute the command to see some of the report.

python2  odbsrmt.py --mode report --ocitype bmc  --host https://objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com --dir /home/oracle/ocicloud/report --base mydbreport --pvtkeyfile  /home/oracle/ocicloud/myprivatekey.ppk --pubfingerprint 6d:f9:57:d5:ff:b1:c0:98:81:90:1e:6e:08:0f:d0:69 --tocid ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaaaaaanz4trskw6jm57cz2fztoasatto3i6z4h33gzfb3pmei5vvnoq --uocid ocid1.user.oc1..aaaaaaaae2mlwyke4gvd7kzxv5zxgg3k2dlcwvubv7vjy6jvbgsaouxq --container migest_backups  --dbid 301925655

And this will give me the following output in my report file.

FileName
Container                Dbname         Dbid        FileSize          LastModified                BackupType                  Incremental  Compressed   Encrypted
220h9q5f_66_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   72876032          2021-12-21 19:37:33         ArchivedLog                 false        true         true
230h9q5g_67_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   75759616          2021-12-21 19:37:32         ArchivedLog                 false        true         true
240h9q5g_68_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   54263808          2021-12-21 19:37:12         ArchivedLog                 false        true         true
250h9q5g_69_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   48496640          2021-12-21 19:36:58         ArchivedLog                 false        true         true
260h9q9n_70_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   159645696         2021-12-21 19:42:46         Datafile                    true         true         true
270h9q9n_71_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   408682496         2021-12-21 19:47:04         Datafile                    true         true         true
280h9q9n_72_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   524288            2021-12-21 19:37:46         Datafile                    true         true         true
290h9q9n_73_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   56885248          2021-12-21 19:39:37         Datafile                    true         true         true
2a0h9q9v_74_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   235667456         2021-12-21 19:45:05         Datafile                    true         true         true
2b0h9qdi_75_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   233832448         2021-12-21 19:46:18         Datafile                    true         true         true
2c0h9qjb_76_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   52166656          2021-12-21 19:44:31         Datafile                    true         true         true
2d0h9qmk_77_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   1572864           2021-12-21 19:44:43         Datafile                    true         true         true
2e0h9qn3_78_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   34865152          2021-12-21 19:45:41         Datafile                    true         true         true
2f0h9qns_79_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   524288            2021-12-21 19:45:20         Datafile                    true         true         true
2g0h9qrg_80_1_1
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   262144            2021-12-21 19:47:14         ArchivedLog                 false        true         true
c-301925655-20211221-00
migest_backups           OCITEST        301925655   524288            2021-12-21 19:47:22         ControlFile SPFILE          false        true         true
Total Storage: 1.34 GB

You can see that this report contains  the backup pieces I need. 

I am going to use the script (below) and pass it the report name to create the commands to catalog the backup pieces.

set linesize 170; #!/bin/bash if [ -f "$1" ] then echo " " echo "report file used for catalog scripts :" $1 echo " " echo " " else echo " " echo "no report file given" echo "you must enter the name of the report file as the first parameter " echo " " exit 0 fi input="$1" while IFS= read -r line do if [[ "$line" != *"true"* ]]; then if [[ "$line" != *"false"* ]]; then if [[ "$line" != *"FileName"* ]]; then if [[ "$line" != *"Container"* ]]; then if [[ "$line" != *"Total"* ]]; then printf '%s\n' "catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '${line%"${line##*[![:space:]]}"}';" fi fi fi fi fi done < "$input"

And when I execute the above script passing my report file, it produces my commands to catalog the backup pieces.

report file used for catalog scripts   : mydbreport4701.lst


catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '220h9q5f_66_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '230h9q5g_67_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '240h9q5g_68_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '250h9q5g_69_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '260h9q9n_70_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '270h9q9n_71_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '280h9q9n_72_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '290h9q9n_73_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '2a0h9q9v_74_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '2b0h9qdi_75_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '2c0h9qjb_76_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '2d0h9qmk_77_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '2e0h9qn3_78_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '2f0h9qns_79_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece '2g0h9qrg_80_1_1';
catalog device type 'sbt_tape' backuppiece 'c-301925655-20211221-00';

Now in RMAN I can execute these commands to catalog the backup pieces from the OCI bucket.

Note : By using "untildate" you  can control the dates that will be reported on.