HOW TO PERFORM BLOCK MEDIA RECOVERY (BMR) WHEN BACKUPS ARE NOT TAKEN BY RMAN.

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Goal
To Perform Block Media Recovery (BMR) when there are OS-backups available, but NO
RMAN backups.

Consider that a block corruption is reported in the database and the corruption is
not wide spread.

Since RMAN is not used in the database the initial solution would be to restore the
file from backup and then recover. But this method will require the file should be
offline during the entire process. On the other hand if BMR can be used, the file
does not need to be taken offline.

This document describes to how to use the OS backup via RMAN and then to perform
the BMR.

Solution
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The backups can be cataloged with RMAN and then BMR can be performed.

Step 1 : Identify the backup of the datafilefile which has the corrupted block(s)
and catalog it within RMAN.

Example: Backup is /u01/backup/users01.dbf

$ export ORACLE_SID=orcl
$ RMAN target=/
RMAN> catalog datafilecopy �/u01/backup/users01.dbf�;

Step 2 : Check the archived redologs.

RMAN is using the archived redologs which are known in V$ARCHIVED_LOG. If

the archivelog files are not
reported in V$ARCHIVED_LOG because they are moved to another location, or
aged out of the controlfile,
then they need to be cataloged as well.

First verify the existing archived redologs :

RMAN> crosscheck archivelog all;
RMAN> delete expired archivelog all;

Then catalog the unknown archived redologs :

RMAN> catalog archivelog �/u01/backup/archivelog/Arch_ocl_1_30.dbf�

Step 3 : Preform the BMR

Having datafile(s) and all required archivelogs cataloged, we can run BMR
as follows.

Example for a block recovery of blocks 99, 100, 101 in datafile 5

RMAN> blockrecover datafile 5 block 99,100,101;

Imp Metalink Notes:

NOTE.283053.1 How To Use RMAN To Check For Logical & Physical Database
NOTE.472231.1 How to Find All the Corrupted Objects in Your Database.
Note.144911.1 RMAN 9i Block-Level Media Recovery - Concept & Example

5. If not using RMAN we can still run Block-Level Media Recovery please see note :
Article-ID: Note 342972.1 Title: HOW TO PERFORM BLOCK MEDIA RECOVERY (BMR) WHEN
BACKUPS ARE NOT TAKEN
BY RMAN.