Re: Swapping causing RMAN controlfile snapshot to fail?

  • From: Chris Taylor <christopherdtaylor1994@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "rjoralist3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <rjoralist3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2013 12:45:39 -0500

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
> 
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> //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
> 
> 
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