You don't say what the older backups are, I'm *guessing* a mixture of full and incremental. a recovery window of 8 days doesn't mean "keep the last 8 days backups" it means "keep the files necessary to recover to 8 days ago or any more recent point" If you have a full and incremental strategy with say full only on the weekend you may have as many as 15 days worth of backups stored to meet that requirement - the full from 15 days ago is needed to recover to 8 days ago. Niall On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Steve Baldwin <stbaldwin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote: > Can someone please tell me what I'm missing here ... > > [oracle@msdbc11 backup-scripts]$ rman target=/ > > Recovery Manager: Release 11.1.0.7.0 - Production on Sun Jan 3 14:08:41 > 2010 > > Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved. > > connected to target database: RAC11D (DBID=1614933222) > > RMAN> list backup summary; > > using target database control file instead of recovery catalog > > List of Backups > =============== > Key TY LV S Device Type Completion Time #Pieces #Copies Compressed Tag > ------- -- -- - ----------- --------------- ------- ------- ---------- --- > 3264 B 0 A DISK 21-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091221T021704 > 3272 B 1 A DISK 22-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091222T001105 > 3280 B 1 A DISK 23-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091223T003814 > 3288 B 1 A DISK 24-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091224T002728 > 3295 B 1 A DISK 25-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091225T002459 > 3302 B 1 A DISK 25-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091225T232731 > 3303 B A A DISK 25-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091225T233803 > 3304 B F A DISK 25-DEC-09 1 1 NO > TAG20091225T233807 > 3305 B A A DISK 27-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091227T054546 > 3306 B A A DISK 27-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091227T054546 > 3307 B A A DISK 27-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091227T054546 > 3308 B A A DISK 27-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091227T054546 > 3309 B 1 A DISK 27-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091227T054927 > 3310 B A A DISK 27-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091227T055838 > 3311 B F A DISK 27-DEC-09 1 1 NO > TAG20091227T055839 > 3312 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T021305 > 3313 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T021305 > 3314 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T021305 > 3315 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T021305 > 3316 B 0 A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T021634 > 3317 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T025240 > 3318 B F A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 NO > TAG20091228T025247 > 3319 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T232639 > 3320 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T232639 > 3321 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T232639 > 3322 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T232639 > 3323 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T232639 > 3324 B 1 A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T233452 > 3325 B A A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 YES > TAG20091228T234517 > 3326 B F A DISK 28-DEC-09 1 1 NO > TAG20091228T234526 > : > > RMAN> delete expired backup; > > allocated channel: ORA_DISK_1 > channel ORA_DISK_1: SID=16245 instance=rac11d1 device type=DISK > > RMAN> delete obsolete; > > RMAN retention policy will be applied to the command > RMAN retention policy is set to recovery window of 8 days > using channel ORA_DISK_1 > no obsolete backups found > > RMAN> > > Based on the setting of a recovery window of 8 days, why haven't the > backups dated 25-DEC-09 and older been seen as obsolete and deleted? > > I've since changed my purging setting to REDUNDANCY 1 and it purged > everything I expected. Any ideas why the previous setting didn't > work? > > Thanks, > > Steve > -- > //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l > > > -- Niall Litchfield Oracle DBA http://www.orawin.info