How to Restore an Oracle Database From a Backup

These are the steps to restore and recover an Oracle database from a backup.

You’ll restore from a full backup.

You’ll have to restore datafiles, controlfiles and archivelogs.

You have a valid RMAN backup.

My backup files are located in the folder:

/home/oracle/backup

You should run the commands with oracle user and instantiate your database with . oraenv.

1. Restore the spfile from the backup

rman target /

RMAN> startup nomount force;

You should know where the spfile is inside the backup files.

RMAN> restore spfile from '/home/oracle/backup/ORADBSPFILE.bck';

RMAN> shutdown immediate;

RMAN> startup nomount;

2. Restore the control file

Connect to sqlplus to check where the controlfiles will be restored.

SQL> show parameter control_files

Normally the controlfile backup is found in the last file generated by RMAN when doing the backup.

Restore the controfile and mount the database.

rman target /

RMAN> restore controlfile from '/home/oracle/backup/ORADBCTL.bck';

RMAN> alter database mount;

3. Catalog the RMAN backups

RMAN> catalog start with '/home/oracle/backup/';

4. Restore and recover the Oracle database

Run the restore and recover inside an RMAN block

rman target /

RMAN > run
{
restore database;
recover database;
}

You might get this error, but this should not be a problem

RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-03002: failure of recover command at 09/12/2024 22:20:13
RMAN-06054: media recovery requesting unknown archived log for thread 1 with sequence 119 and starting SCN of 5208264

5. Open the database with resetlogs

Run this command to open the database:

RMAN> alter database open resetlogs;

And now you should have your database restored and recovered.

I hope this was helpful.