Emre Baransel - Oracle Blog

Cataloging Older Files in the Recovery Catalog

RMAN> CATALOG DATAFILECOPY '/disk1/old_datafiles/01_01_2003/users01.dbf';

RMAN> CATALOG ARCHIVELOG '/disk1/arch_logs/archive1_731.dbf', '/disk1/arch_logs/archive1_732.dbf';

RMAN> CATALOG BACKUPPIECE '/disk1/backups/backup_820.bkp';

You can also catalog multiple backup files in a directory at once, using the CATALOG START WITH command, as shown in this example:

RMAN> CATALOG START WITH '/disk1/backups/';

RMAN lists the files to be added to the RMAN repository and prompts for confirmation before adding the backups.

Be careful when creating your prefix for CATALOG START WITH. RMAN scans all paths for all files on disk which begin with your specified prefix. The wrong prefix may include more files than you intend. For example, a group of directories /disk1/backups , /disk1/backups-year2003, /disk1/backupsets, and /disk1/backupsets/test and so on, all contain backup files. The command

RMAN> CATALOG START WITH '/disk1/backups';

catalogs all files in all of these directories, because /disk1/backups is a prefix for the paths for all of these directories. In order to catalog only backups in the /disk1/backups directory, the correct command would be:

RMAN> CATALOG START WITH '/disk1/backups/';