Oracle Corner

Problem description

When duplicating the database, one way of handling the RMAN catalogue is:

• Unregister the database to be refreshed from the catalogue
• Run duplicate
• Change the DBID on the new database
• Use "nid" command. It requires an outage.
  
• Register a new database with the catalogue

If you are not sure whether your duplicate will succeed, you can delay the unregister until after the duplication and:

• Connect to RMAN catalogue
• select * from rc_database;
• Find your old database and unregister with
• execute dbms_rcvcat.unregisterdatabase(db_key, db_id);
  

If it happened that you did not change the DBID and ran some catalogue commands, you might experience the error:
RMAN-20011: target database incarnation is not current in recovery catalogue
You might even get the empty list for the database incarnations.

Fix

To fix this, log into your RMAN catalogue database with sqlplus:

• sqlplus rman@rmancat
• select * from rc_database;
• You will notice at least 2 DBINC_KEY values for your database
• Find the key that was valid before the current one.
  
• If you are not sure which one, check the resetlogs dates
• It will probably have the status "PARENT"
• If, for example, old DBINC_KEY is 18234933
  
• rman target / catalog rman@rmancat
• reset database to incarnation 18234933;