Prior to 11g, if an archived log is corrupt in the FRA then RMAN command BACKUP RECOVERY AREA command will fail, even though the log has been archived to both the FRA and to a local archivelog destination.
Truncated log (10G):
ORA-19625: error identifying file D:\ORACLE\PRODUCT\10.2.0\FLASH_RECOVERY_AREA\TEST\ARCHIVELOG\2007_10_29\O1_MF_1_23_3LBZC64C_.ARC ORA-27046: file size is not a multiple of logical block size OSD-04012: file size mismatch
Missing log (10G):
RMAN-03002: failure of backup command at 10/29/2007 10:16:04 RMAN-06059: expected archived log not found, lost of archived log compromises recoverability ORA-19625: error identifying file D:\ORACLE\PRODUCT\10.2.0\FLASH_RECOVERY_AREA\TEST\ARCHIVELOG\2007_10_29\O1_MF_1_23_3LBZC64C_.ARC ORA-27041: unable to open file OSD-04002: unable to open file O/S-Error: (OS 2) The system cannot find the file specified.
The 11g Archived Redo Log Failover feature enables RMAN to complete a backup even when some archiving destinations are missing logs or contain logs with corrupt blocks where a local archivelog destination is configured alongside the FRA. If at least one log corresponding to a given log sequence and thread is available in the flash recovery area or any of the archiving destinations, then RMAN tries to back it up. If RMAN finds a corrupt block in a log file during backup, it searches other destinations for a copy of that log without corrupt blocks.
RMAN will failover to a local destination if the archivelog in the FRA is corrupt:
archived log /emea/rdbms/32bit/app/oracle/oradata/EMR111U3/FRA/EMR111U3/archivelog/2007_10_29/o1_mf_1_56_3lcb0tmh_.arc not found or out of sync with catalog trying alternate file for archived log of thread 1 with sequence 56 channel ORA_DISK_1: starting archived log backup set channel ORA_DISK_1: specifying archived log(s) in backup set input archived log thread=1 sequence=56 RECID=1 STAMP=637234205
However, if the log is truncated then rman will fail:
RMAN-00571: =========================================================== RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS =============== RMAN-00571: =========================================================== RMAN-03009: failure of backup command on ORA_DISK_1 channel at 10/29/2007 09:42:18 ORA-19575: expected 19359 blocks in file /emea/rdbms/32bit/app/oracle/oradata/EMR111U3/FRA/EMR111U3/archivelog/2007_10_29/o1_mf_1_56_3lcb0tmh_.arc, found 199
If the log is missing from the FRA then RMAN will failover to the corresponding local archivelog dest:
channel ORA_DISK_1: SID=138 device type=DISK archived log /emea/rdbms/32bit/app/oracle/oradata/EMR111U3/FRA/EMR111U3/archivelog/2007_10_29/o1_mf_1_56_3lcb0tmh_.arc not found or out of sync with catalog trying alternate file for archived log of thread 1 with sequence 56