"Peace
cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by
understanding."
-Albert
Einstein (1879-1955)
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What is RDA?
Purpose
RDA is a set of Unix shell
scripts to gather detailed information about an Oracle environment.
The scripts are focused to collect information that will aid in
problem diagnosis, however the output is also very useful
to see the overall system
configuration. We encourage the use of RDA because it gives a
comprehensive picture of the customer's environment. This can greatly
reduce tar resolution time by minimizing the number of requests from
Oracle Support Services for more information. We have specifically
designed RDA to be as unobtrusive as possible. RDA does not modify
your system in any way, it merely collects data useful for Oracle
Support Services.
Platforms
Supported
At this time, the scripts
are supported on the following Unix platforms:
Sun Solaris (2.5 - 8)
HP-UX (10.X and 11.X)
Compaq Unix (OSF1) 4.x
and 5.x
IBM AIX
Intel Linux (RedHat and
SuSE)
Products
Supported
RDA collects information
useful for corrective issues related to the
following products
Oracle RDBMS Server
(Standard and Enterprise Editions)
Oracle Application Server
(HTTP Server)
Oracle Management Server
and Intelligent Agent
OLAP Products (Express
Server, Financial Analyzer, and
Demand Planning Server)
Oracle Networking
products
Versions
Supported
RDA supports all
supported versions of the above Oracle products.
In most cases it will
also run on desupported versions as well, although the information
collected may not be as extensive.
When
is RDA useful for Oracle Support Services?
RDA is most useful when
the output is provided immediately after logging
an iTAR so that the
analyst assigned to your iTAR has a comprehensive
set of information about
your environment right away. RDA is geared towards
corrective issues (e.g.
problems) rather than consultative issues
(e.g. How? Why? and What?
questions) RDA is essential for the following types of tars:
Performance
issues
Installation/configuration
issues
ORA-600,
ORA-7445, and ORA-3113 errors
Upgrade,
migration, and linking issues
Other
corrective issues
Download
Current Unix Version:
3.10, November 25, 2002
Go to Oracle MetaLink and
download the file
(change the filename to
rda.tar when saving).
Installation
Instructions
Installing RDA is quite
simple and straightforward:
Create a new directory on
your Unix server that will be
used exclusively for RDA.
It does not matter where you
create this directory or
what it is named, but it should be
owned by the same user
that owns the Oracle software
installation.
Do not use a directory
that contains an older version of
RDA unless you have
deleted the older version of RDA first.
Starting with RDA version
3.03, RDA now creates many
sub directories for the
different portions of RDA.
Ftp the downloaded
rda.tar file to your Unix server in binary
mode and place it in the
directory created in
step 1. Verify
the size of the file to ensure
that it was transferred
properly
% ls -ltr rda.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle dba
601600 Nov 25 12:11 rda.tar
Extract the contents of
the tar archive
% tar -xvf rda.tar
Execution
Instructions
It is impossible to tell
how long RDA will take to execute as it depends on so many
variables, such as system activity, the options chosen, network
settings etc... On an average system RDA will take just a few
minutes to run. The scripts are designed so that most commands that
could potentially not complete (e.g. a lsnrctl status command if the
listener is hung) will be stopped if they do not finish within
thirty seconds. It is not unusual for RDA to take 15 minutes or more
on a very busy server, especially if there are many Oracle listener
processes active.
Log on as the Unix user
that owns the Oracle installation.
On some operating systems
this user will not have the necessary permissions to run all of the
commands and utilities called by RDA (e.g. sar, top, vmstat,
etc...). If you are running RDA to assist in resolving a tar, the
analyst will most likely need the information pertaining to the
Oracle owner. The exception to this rule, is if you are running RDA
to assist in a performance related issue. In this case, we recommend
that you log on as the Unix user that owns the Oracle software, then
issue
su
root or su privileged_user
Do not use su - as
that will reset the environment.
Run setup.sh to configure
RDA for the options to be collected
% ./setup.sh
Setup for the Oracle
rda.sh Version 3.10 parameters
Enter the Prefix for all
the Files Generated
Hit Return to Accept
Default: RDA
============================>
[More
prompts continue...]
At this time, you should
be able to run the rda script
######################################################
1) Make sure it is
executable: $ chmod +x rda.sh
2) At this point, $ORACLE_SID
should be set and you
should be able to connect
to sqlplus with the userid
you entered
3) The screen will
indicate various iterations of
files being collected.
Once it has completed,
you will be able to send the
resulting /rda309/RDA_Output/RDA.<pid>.rda.tar.Z
file
to Oracle.
<pid> will be the
process id from the execution of
rda.sh that created the
file.
4) If this file was
generated to assist in resolving a
TAR, please send /rda309/RDA_Output/RDA.<pid>.rda.tar.Z
to Oracle Support using
the 'upload to support' link in
the Tar Update section of
Metalink.
will be the process id
from the execution of rda.sh that
created the file.
#######################################################
Special
notes on userids and passwords
Starting with version
3.03 of RDA, the default option is not to store the password in
plain text in the setup.txt file, but to prompt the user for the
password when RDA is started. If you are currently executing RDA at
regularly scheduled intervals via cron, you may need to adjust your
cron jobs accordingly. You still have the option of storing the
password as plain text in the setup.txt file, should you so desire.
Starting with version
3.03 of RDA, you may now indicate if the userid provided is a SYSDBA
user. However, RDA does not support specifying / as the username.
Review setup.txt
(optional)
After setup.sh
completes you can optionally view the setup.txt file and make any
changes manually.
Run rda.sh (do not
specify the shell when running rda.sh or you will receive
various "is not
an identifier" errors).
% ./rda.sh
RDA Started Sun Nov 12
12:11:08 EDT 2002
RDA Starting Version
3.10, please wait..
[More output is
displayed...]
Review the output
(start with RDA__START.htm)
The simplest way of
reviewing the output files is to launch a web browser on the same
machine where rda.sh is
run and open the file RDA__START.htm
located in the RDA_Output directory.
Alternatively, you may
ftp the <prefix>.<pid>.rda.tar.Z output file,
created in the RDA_Output directory, in binary mode to a Windows
client machine. Most Windows compression utilities, such as WinZip
version 8.0+, can read Unix compressed files.
A third option would be
to access the RDA__START.htm
file from a browser using the ftp (instead of http) protocol. The
URL will look similar to ftp://username@hostname.domain/home/rda_dir/RDA_Output//RDA__START.htm.
Note that this option may not work with all browsers or servers.
Upload the
<prefix>.<pid>.rda.tar.Z file to Oracle Support
RDA will produce a
compressed tar file called <prefix>.<pid>.rda.tar.Z. Please
do not rename the file as it will help Oracle Support to quickly
identify that RDA output is attached to the iTAR After
you log the iTAR, upload the file using the 'upload to support'
link when updating the iTAR via MetaLink. Remember to transfer
this file in binary mode!
Output
The output is a set of HTML
and text files located in the RDA output directory (RDA_Output by
default). The files are also archived and compressed into
<prefix>.<pid>.rda.tar.Z to transfer easily. Remember to
transfer this file in binary mode!
Ensure that the .sh files
have execute privileges
chmod +x *.sh
Do not specify the shell
to use or you will receive various "is not an
identifier" errors.
Wrong: /usr/bin/sh rda.sh
Right: ./rda.sh
If RDA is unable to
connect to the database, check the following:
If you answered Y to
specify that the user is a SYSDBA user when running setup.sh,
ensure that you can connect with that user using AS SYSDBA. For
example, if you specified SYSTEM as the username RDA should use,
then ensure that you can connect with the following command in
sqlplus:
connect system AS SYSDBA
If you cannot, then run
setup.sh again and answer N to this question or edit setup.txt and
set SYSDBA_USER=N
If you are using su to
connect to root or a privileged user, do not use su - as
the minus resets the environment.
There is an open bug
where RDA is unable to connect to the database if the login.sql or
glogin.sql files, located in $ORACLE_HOME/sqlplus/admin, contain
user prompts. The only workaround is to temporarily rename these
files while running RDA.
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