Thats exactly what would happen if a backup is occurring at the OS layer on the filesystem you need to backup a file on. Chris Sent from my mobile device. Please ignore any typos. On Sep 4, 2013, at 11:22 AM, "Rich Jesse" <rjoralist3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hey all, > > In 11.2.0.3 under AIX 5.3 TL12, I had a one-time RMAN error where it failed > to snapshot the controlfile after a scheduled archive log backup: > > RMAN-03009: failure of Control File and SPFILE Autobackup command on > ORA_DISK_1 channel at 08/03/2013 02:10:10 > ORA-01580: error creating control backup file > /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1/dbs/snapcf_xxxxx.f > ORA-27041: unable to open file > IBM AIX RISC System/6000 Error: 22: Invalid argument > Additional information: 4 > > I opened an SR and the tech saw this in the alert.log: > > WARNING: Heavy swapping observed on system in last 5 mins. > pct of memory swapped in [6.25%] pct of memory swapped out [11.01%]. > > So, the tech surmised that the RMAN failure was due to swapping ("paging" in > AIX land). Huh? That seems to be the opposite of the intent of paging, > which is to keep programs running during memory pressure. Here's some more > AIX info: > > minperm%=5 > maxperm%=90 > maxclient%=90 > lru_file_repage=0 > > nmon reports the FileSystemCache usually around 12%, PageSpace at about 13% > used (1.7GB of 12.8GB). > > When this failure occurred, a mksysb root VG backup kicked off. That > apparently is the cause of the paging spike, as it happens every time mksysb > runs. And it so happens that the controlfile snapshot is on the root VG (on > purpose!). So my theory is that RMAN just happened to hit the controlfile > snapshot at the exact same time that mksysb had a hold of the old one, > although I can find no documentation to backup that behavior nor to discount > it. > > Thoughts? > > TIA! > Rich > > -- > //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l > > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l