DBAHelper FAQ

Is there anywhere more information about DBAHelper available?

Yes, it is. First, there is the documentation shipped with the software - which you will find either in the doc/html/ subdirectory of the dbahelper*.tar.gz distribution - or in /usr/share/doc/dbahelper (for Debian/RPM packages). Additionally, there is an article available about the RMan Framework, which gives you some more descriptive information about the usage of the stuff in the rman/ subdirectory.

Why aren't there any DBAHelper executables in the PATH?

You even installed from a (DEB/RPM) package, but still there is nothing from DBAHelper in the PATH - why so? And why the heck is everything installed where it is?

Let's put both questions together, and save to much techno-bubble: We cannot simply install everything in your /usr/bin directory since that would cause a real mess (forget about if all other progs would do so!). But somehow you are still right with the PATH question. While you could try to simply add the /usr/share/dbahelper and /usr/share/dbahelper/rman directories to your PATH variable as a fast work-around, it is not guaranteed that this works in all cases. But soon, there will be central "hooks" implemented: with v0.2.6 comes the rmanw script to your /usr/bin directory, and you can call that like you did call rman.sh before - but from anywhere you are, since that directory is in the PATH environment. For the remaining scripts, there will be a similar central dbah command available as soon as possible.

rman.sh crashes with "syntax error: operand expected "

If rman.sh crashes with a message like

  ./rman.sh: line 400: ·────────────────────────────────────────────────────────: syntax error: operand expected (error token is "·────────────────────────────────────────────────────────")

the cause is most likely that you added some kind of "greeting" in your $ORACLE_HOME/sqlplus/admin/glogin.sql script. In the above example, the corresponding lines have been

PROMPT ·────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
PROMPT | Hello &_USER! Welcome to &_CONNECT_IDENTIFIER.
PROMPT | You are connected &_PRIVILEGE
PROMPT ·────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Since rman.sh in some places uses SQL*Plus to retrieve some database values, this additional (and unexpected) output interferes. At the moment, only the force_cleanup command is affected by this. Since you will use that only in rare conditions, the solution is to (temporarily) take those lines out of your glogin.sql file.

Is there an Update Notifier for new releases?

So you don't want to miss a release? No problem. You have several options:

• Using a Debian or RPM based Linux distribution, you can include the  APT/YUM Repository in your APT/YUM configuration. More information can be found following the link.
• If you are a  Freshmeat member, you can subscribe to the  DBAHelper project there, and receive an email on every release. Please, don't forget to rate the project!
• You can subscribe to the IzzySoft RSS Newsfeed to have the always latest release information for all IzzySoft projects
• You can subscribe to the projects Timeline RSS feed to see all changes (including releases)
• Not enough? Version junkie? You also can checkout the latest development code from the SVN repository (see below), and create a scheduler (e.g. Cron) job to update that copy regularly

How can I check out the latest development code?

Sometimes you may not want to wait for the next release to appear - either since there is a new feature you immediately want to use, or some minor bugfix which affects you and is not yet released. Or you are simply a version junkie Never mind: You always can check out the latest development code anonymously with Subversion:

  svn co http://projects.izzysoft.de/repos/dbahelper/trunk

If you want the latest code in order to supply YOUR changes - i.e. you want to take place in development, you better contact the author as mentioned in the documentation - since the above mentioned link to the repository is read-only…