Media Recovery Needed

[bobby13]

I get the following error when i startup the database:

MGR-03514: Unable to start database
ORA-01113: File 1 needs media recovery
ORA-01110: Datafile 1 E:\ORADATA\SYSTEM01.ORA

What does this error mean? and how do i apply media recovery? Does media recovery mean restore from backup. Can someone help?

Regards
Bobby

 

[fmorel]

If it is a production database, I suggest that you call Oracle Support.

If your database is in archivelog mode, you may try to do a
"alter database recover automatic" when connected as a sysdba.

If your database is not in archivelog mode, you way need to restore a full cold backup.

 

[bobby13]

Thanks for your feedback, unfortunately this is our production database, and we have no Oracle support, I'm restoring from last weeks backup at the moment hopefully it will work.

Regards
Bobby

 

[fmorel]

Before restoring the backup, you should backup (somewhere else) your crashed database.

 

[karluk]

You may very well be premature in restoring from backup. There are quite a few scenarios where you can recover, even if you aren't running in archive log mode. See, for example, thread186-680705.

 

[sbix]

Did you try something like:
ALTER DATABASE MOUNT;
ALTER DATABASE RECOVER DATAFILE 'E:\ORADATA\SYSTEM01.ORA';

 

[KULJEETSINGH]

if database is archive mode then issue
recover datafile 1;
it will solve u r problem.

 

[bobby13]

Thanks for all your feedback, I resolved the problem the hard way, basically from cold backup and the database is up and running, unfortunately we have lost one days work!
**** CHEERS! ****

Regards
Bobby

 

[fmorel]

you should put your database in archivelog mode !!! It works very well !

 

[SantaMufasa]

Bobby,

I assure you that you did not need to lose even one committed transaction. If you cannot afford to lose a certain number of transactions, then you should be in ARCHIVELOG mode (as FMorel mentions). The cost to your organization for being in ARCHIVELOG mode is (a small, medium, or large amount) of disk space, depending upon your update volume. But in comparison to the business risks of losing transactions, that may be an IMPERATIVE cost.

In the absence of confirmations from you that you had tried the recovery techniques that are available to you even if your database is not in ARCHIVELOG mode, I heartily concur with Karl, that "You may very well be premature in restoring from backup."

I am not at all convinced that you needed to resolve "the problem the hard way" and you probably did not need to lose one day's work. I'm not trying to be critical or make you feel bad; I just want you (and others that may read this thread in the future) to not be so trigger happy to restore from backup until you have exhausted the other fine recovery alternatives that are available to you.

In retrospect, how many of the above recovery suggestions did you actually try, and what were Oracle's responses? Our knowing that information might partially let you off the proverbial hook (at least in Tek-Tipsters minds).

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA @ 09:13 (03Dec03) GMT, 02:13 (03Dec03) Mountain Time)

 

[bobby13]

A brief background about my job, I maintain the Education Management System, which runs on Oracle 9i, we have a annual maintenence with Oracle so they sort all over DB problems, the server and EMS software is my area of expertise. I personaly want to develop my Oracle skills because when something goes wrong Oracle fix the problem but don't ever share the bit about how they did it. Through the help of Tek-tips and oracle publications, my Oracle knowledge has dramatically increased.

So i'm the only person in my organisation who knows something about Oracle. Back to the problem, Basically the Oracle database with the media recovery error has nothing to do with my dept, I was approached by our Finance Director asking me to have a look at their database as no one knew anything about it.

Also the Oracle 8 database was installed on a very low spec server with minimum hard disk space. The server had basically run out of hard disk space as the database grew. 6 months back the finance department decided to swope from Oracle to MS SQL server, they are still waiting for the go ahead.

So know one bothered to maintain the current database which was still being used by the Finance Dept. Before i got involved, to make matters worse ours IT support department decided to move the ORACLE folder to another partition disk on the same server, with more hard disk space.

So when they rebooted the server Oracle did not startup as the location of the ini.ora and control files had changed. So when I eventually sorted that problem one of the files got corrupted.

So before i got to use the suggestions made by tek-tips members our IT director called the shot of restoring from backup, obviously I told him that by doing so they will loose data, but they would rather loose a days worth of data, than have the database offline another day, it has been offline since Friday.

So there wasn't much i could do!





Regards
Bobby

 

[SantaMufasa]

Bobby,

Your good background information and the fact that the IT Director called the shot absolves you from any derrogatories. It sounds like you did what you could under the circumstances.

Cheers,

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA @ 10:46 (03Dec03) GMT, 03:46 (03Dec03) Mountain Time)