Archive Logs In 11gR1 Are Written To DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST And LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_1 (Doc ID 746228.1)

Symptoms

-- Problem Statement:
Archive logs are being written to a default location, even when the following conditions are met:

- LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST is not set
- LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n is not set
- DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST is set

The Oracle documentation states:

  Oracle® Database Backup and Recovery User's Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1) Part Number B28270-03

     5 Configuring the RMAN Environment

        Configuring Archived Redo Log Locations

              "Note also that if you enable archiving but do not set any value forLOG_ARCHIVE_DEST,LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n, orDB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST, then the redo logs are archived
                to a default location that is platform-specific. For example, on Solaris the default is?/dbs."

-- Steps To Reproduce:
- Create 11.1.0.6 database using DBCA
- Click "enable archiving" in DBCA

After DBCA completes, connect to the database and issue the following queries:

SQL> show parameter log_archive_dest
-- There should be no values for log_archive_dest or log_archive_dest_n.

SQL> show parameter db_recover
-- There should be values for the FRA and its size, from DBCA.

SQL> col dest_name format a20
SQL> col destination format a48
SQL> select dest_name, destination from v$archive_dest;
-- There should be values in LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_1 (default location), and LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_10 (USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST).

From this one can see that:

- LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST is not set
- LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n is not set (as a parameter)
- DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST is set

However, LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_1 has a value as seen in v$archive_dest.

-- Business Impact:
This is causing higher disk space utilization by archive logs than desired.

Changes

Cause

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