Renaming or Moving Files in Oracle


In many situations, a datafile or logfile must be renamed inside Oracle. Whereas the contents of the file remain valid, you need to define a new physical name or location for it. For example:

- You want to move a database file to a different disk for performance or maintenance reasons.
- You have restored a datafile from backup, but the disk where it should normally be placed has crashed and you need to relocate it to a different disk.
- You have moved or renamed a datafile at operating system level but forgot to rename it within Oracle. At startup, you get ORA-01157 and ORA-01110. If the database is up and you try to shut it down normal or immediate, you get ORA-01116 ad ORA-01110.
- You have multiple databases on the same machine and you need to rename certain database files to prevent collision and confusion.

Managing Tablespaces and DataFiles

RENAME OR MOVE A DATAFILE FOR A SINGLE TABLESPACE
1. Make the tablespace offline.
ALTER TABLESPACE <TABLESPACE_NAME> OFFLINE;

2. Copy the datafile(s) to the new location using the operating system copy command.

3. Rename the datafile to the new location. This updates the entry for the datafile(s) in the controlfile.
ALTER TABLESPACE <TABLESPACE_NAME> RENAME DATAFILE '/old_path/name.dbf' TO '/old_path/name.dbf';

4. Once the alter database statement has been processed for the datafile(s) you can bring the tablespace online.
ALTER TABLESPACE <TABLESPACE_NAME> ONLINE;


Another method is to have the database in mount state:
1. SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE
2. STARTUP MOUNT
3. Copy the datafile(s) to the new location using the operating system copy command
4. ALTER DATABASE RENAME FILE '/old_path/name.dbf'' TO '/new_path/name.dbf';
5. ALTER DATABASE OPEN;
6. Query v$dbfile to confirm that the changes made were correct.
SELECT * FROM V$DBFILE;
7. Remove the datafile(s) from the old location at the operating system level.

ADD A DATAFILE
Adding a File is very simple:
ALTER TABLESPACE <TABLESPACE_NAME> ADD DATAFILE '<file specific> SIZE xxxM;
ALTER TABLESPACE tbs_03 ADD DATAFILE 'tbs_f04.dbf' SIZE 100M AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 30m MAXSIZE UNLIMITED;


DROP A TABLESPACE

Dropping a Tablespace is very simple:
DROP TABLESPACE <TABLESPACE_NAME> INCLUDING CONTENTS AND DATAFILES CASCADE;

You can use just DROP TABLESPACE <tablespace name>, but the data files won’t be dropped and the tablespace must be empty (no objects exist in the tablespace); otherwise, Oracle will return an error. Further, the DROP TABLESPACE <tablespace name> INCLUDING CONTENTS command drops all the objects, if they exist in the tablespace. Next, by including the CASCADE option you can drop foreign key references from objects in the other tablespaces to the one you’re dropping. The DATAFILES option, which is available in Oracle9i, will physically delete the related data files as well.


CREATE A TABLESPACE

CREATE TABLESPACE <TABLESPACE_NAME>
DATAFILE '/opt/oracle/oradata/FGUARD/fg_data01.dbf' Size 800M AutoExtend On Next 100M  Maxsize 2000M,
               '/opt/oracle/oradata/FGUARD/fg_data02.dbf' Size 800M AutoExtend On Next 100M  Maxsize 2000M
EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL
SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO;


INCREASE THE TABLESPACE SIZE
If you get a message like:
ORA-1654: unable to extend index IFSSYS.SYS_C002067 by 64 in tablespace  FG_DATA

Then you will need to increase the datafile size associated to that Tablespace, so perform the following steps:
1- First, see how filled up the current datafile(s) are:
select FILE_NAME, BYTES/1024/1024 "Size MB", BLOCKS, MAXBLOCKS from dba_data_files where tablespace_name = 'PPP_DATA';

FILE_NAME                                       Size MB   BLOCKS    MAXBLOCKS

----------------------------------------------  --------- --------- ------------------
/usr/local/oracle/oradata/webct/fg_data01.dbf   400       524284    524228

Notice that the BLOCKS 524284 = MAXBLOCKS 524288, that means that the tablespace is maxed out.

Now we can add another datafile to that tablespace:
alter tablespace FG_DATA add datafile '/usr/local/oracle/oradata/webct/fg_data02.dbf' size 1024M autoextend on next 100M maxsize 4096M;

or increase the existing one:
alter database datafile '/usr/local/oracle/oradata/webct/fg_data02.dbf' resize 800m;


Managing Control Files

The current location of the controlfiles can be queried from the V$CONTROLFILE view, as shown below.
select name from v$controlfile;
NAME
---------------------------------------------------------------
/u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0/oradata/DEVSOL/control01.ctl
/u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0/oradata/DEVSOL/control02.ctl
/u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0/oradata/DEVSOL/control03.ctl

In order to rename or move these files we must alter the value of the control_files instance parameter.
show parameter control_files
NAME             VALUE
---------------- ------------------------------------------ ------------------------------
control_files      /u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0/oradata/DEVSOL/control01.ctl, /u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0/oradata/DEVSOL/control02.ctl, /u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0/oradata/DE
 

To move or rename a controlfile do the following:
    * Alter the control_files parameter using the ALTER SYSTEM comamnd.
    * Shutdown the database.
    * Rename the physical file on the OS.
    * Start the database.

The following SQL*Plus output shows how this is done for an instance using an spfile. For instances using a pfile replace the spfile manipulation steps with an amendment of the parameter in the init.ora file.
ALTER SYSTEM SET control_files='/new_path/control01.ctl',  '/new_path/control02.ctl', '/new_path/control03.ctl' SCOPE=SPFILE;
SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE
!mv /old_path/control01.ctl /new_path/control01.ctl
!mv /old_path/control02.ctl /new_path/control02.ctl
!mv /old_path/control03.ctl /new_path/control03.ctl
STARTUP

Repeating the initial query shows that the the CONTROLFILES has been renamed in the data dictionary.
select name from v$controlfile;


Managing Logfiles
The current location of the logfiles can be queried from the V$LOGFILE view, as shown below.
SELECT member FROM v$logfile;
MEMBER
--------------------------------------------------------
/u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0/oradata/DEVSOL/redo01.log
/u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0/oradata/DEVSOL/redo02.log
/u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0/oradata/DEVSOL/redo03.log

To move or rename a logfile do the following:
    * Shutdown the database.
    * Rename the physical file on the OS.
    * Start the database in mount mode.
    * Issue the ALTER DATABASE RENAME FILE command to rename the file within the Oracle dictionary.
    * Open the database.

The following SQL*Plus output shows how this is done.
SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE
!mv /old_path/redo01.log /new_path/redo01.log
!mv /old_path/redo02.log /new_path/redo02.log
!mv /old_path/redo03.log /new_path/redo03.log
STARTUP MOUNT

ALTER DATABASE RENAME FILE '/old_path/redo01.log'' TO '/new_path/redo01.log';
ALTER DATABASE RENAME FILE '/old_path/redo02.log'' TO '/new_path/redo02.log';
ALTER DATABASE RENAME FILE '/old_path/redo03.log'' TO '/new_path/redo03.log';
ALTER DATABASE OPEN;

Repeating the initial query shows that the the logfile has been renamed in the data dictionary.
SELECT member FROM v$logfile;