The nightly incremental backups are failing. They run for about 3
hours, then fail with a 41 error. Then retry, run for about 3 hours and
then error 41 again. Then the job fails with an error 6.
This is a large database and (at times) very static. I surmise that the
incremental backup is indeed running for 3 hours without finding any
changed blocks to write to tape, thus triggering the timeout. And
indeed the weekly full backup always runs to completion without any
problem (takes about 7 hours).
You should probably enable block change tracking. This allows Oracle to track changes to the database so that RMAN does not scan the database looking for changes to the database for incremental backups, but just reads the
BCT file and backs up the blocks pointed to.
It is very fast, and timeouts should no longer be an issue.
Here's how to check if it is enabled:
select status from v$block_change_tracking;
Here's an example of enabling it:
alter database enable block change tracking using file '/u01/oradata/ts10/dbf/ts10/bctf01.dbf' reuse /
The file will not be of benefit until after the next full backup.
