Oracle RMAN Pocket Reference

Executing RMAN Commands from a File

This section explains how to run RMAN commands that you’ve stored in an O/S file. By executing commands from an O/S file, you promote code reusability, which makes it simpler to run commands in batch mode.

To run RMAN commands from a command file:

1. Put the commands in a text file.

2. Instruct RMAN to run the commands.

First, open up a file with your favorite text editor (such as vi) and enter the RMAN commands. The commands should be identical to what you would otherwise type in manually. For example, create a file called full_back.rmn, and place in it the following text. Note that for this example to work you must have a directory called /ora01/backup.

# This script takes a full backup of the database.
run {
  # allocate a channel
  allocate channel d1 type disk;
  # issue the backup command
  backup full format '/ora01/backup/rman_%d_%U.bus' 
    database;
}

Note

Comments in RMAN command files begin with a # sign. Anything after a # sign on the same line is a comment.

To run the script, issue the following RMAN command to connect to the target and catalog databases, and execute your script:

$ rman target / nocatalog @full_back.rmn log=full_back.log

After your script completes, you can view the contents of full_back.log to see if the job ran successfully.

Another way to run commands in an O/S file is to specify the file after you’ve started RMAN:

$ rman nocatalog

RMAN> connect target /

RMAN> @full_back.rmn

Placing RMAN commands within O/S files offers a flexible way ...