Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) FAQ

2009 May 14
tags: , , ,
by Luis Moreno Campos

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Subject: Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 – FAQ
Doc ID: 330363.1 Type: DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS
Modified Date: 13-MAY-2009 Status: PUBLISHED

RDA 4.x FAQ

RDA Documentation Links
FAQ
You are here.

In This Document

Linux/Unix/Windows/MacOS Issues
  1. What is the purpose of (RDA 4.x)?
  2. Is RDA required in order to resolve my SR?
  3. What is required to run RDA?
  4. How much space do I need to run RDA?
  5. What platforms does RDA support, what about OpenVMS?
  6. Where can I download RDA package?
  7. I don’t have Perl, where can I get a binary/compiled version RDA?
  8. How do I run a RDA collection?
  9. How do I force RDA to run Setup again?
  10. How long does it take to run a RDA collection?
  11. How do I force RDA to collect data again?
  12. Where is the RDA output located?
  13. Is there is a localized version of RDA 4.x?
  14. Will RDA 4 find the solution to my TAR?
  15. There are sections missing my RDA report, why?
  1. What does the RDA-nnnnn error mean when I executed RDA?
  2. What does the RDA-00010 error mean?
  3. What does the RDA-00006 error mean?
  4. What does the OCM-09004 error mean?
  5. How to change the default parameters like SQL_TIMEOUT?
  6. Can RDA be setup without asking any questions?
  7. How can I reduce the size or amount of RDA output files?
  8. Can RDA be scheduled to run automatically via CRON or AT?
  9. How do I stop RDA from collecting everything?
  10. How do I verify the RDA package that I installed is not corrupted?
  11. RDA is taking a long time to run the setup process, why?
  1. Why is RDA repeating the same title message several times during setup?
  2. When I run RDA it creates a “core dump” or segmention violation, what now?
  3. When I run RDA there is not .zip file in my [RDA_OUTPUT] directory, what now?
  4. How do I upgrade my RDA installation from the prior release?
  5. When I run the binary version of RDA it asks for newer libraries, what now?
  6. RDA is reporting incorrect timestamp’s of directory and file listing, why?
  7. Can I connect to a remote database using RDA?
  8. I am having difficulty running RDA 4. What do I do?
  9. How do I provide RDA output to Oracle Support?
  10. There are connection issues when attempting to connect to OID database SID?
  11. Why does RDA not collect database information when getting ORA-28002 or ORA-28011?
RAC/Cluster/Multi-Node Environments
See RAC Cluster Guide – Knowledge Article 359395.1
OCM_Related_issues
  1. emCCR returns a KEY_MISMATCH error
  2. Data Collected by OCM is incorrect/invalid
  1. Installation of OCM fails with “CCR” user already exists – ORA-20005
  2. How to get OCM to connect successfully to Oracle
  1. Knowledge Article 365734.1 – How To Change the CSI, Country code, Metalink_id or proxy details used by OCM

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. What is the purpose of Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA 4.x)?
    2. RDA 4.x is designed to be platform independent; there is no longer a separate version for UNIX and Windows. RDA is able to collect the same data set as both the RDA 3.14.1 for UNIX and RDA 3.11.1 for Windows versions. RDA code is readable by the customer so that if there are any concerns about security, they can see exactly what is collected. Documentation is included with the RDA code so that customers can understand and troubleshoot RDA themselves. Also, the RDA documentation has been rewritten and is more comprehensive than in the past to give the customer (internal and external) better understanding.

  2. Is RDA required in order to resolve my TAR?
    3. We strongly encourage the use of RDA as it can greatly assist the analyst in resolving your TAR, it contain vast amount of configuration and diagnostic data that reduces the “round trip” time needed to resolve most issues.

    RDA has a strong focus on robustness and supportability, in the rare case you are unable to use RDA, please update the tar to inform your analyst, and request that work on the TAR continue without the benefit of RDA. Oracle engineers are trained to work issues without the aid of RDA.

  3. What is required to run RDA?
    4. RDA 4.x is command line program written in Perl. It uses only basic Perl libraries so the customer should never have to install anything, as long as Oracle software is available. It uses the Perl libraries that are shipped with Oracle or shipped with some UNIX platforms. RDA has been certified and tested on Perl versions 5.005 – 5.10.x. If for some reason Perl is not available or is inaccessible on the customer environment, then a binary version is available for download on major platforms.

    Additionally, RDA users need access to the 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 on UNIX (e.g. sar, top, vmstat, etc) or on Windows (WinMsd utility and (MSInfo32 on Windows 2000, Windows 2003). 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 when RDA is used to assist in a performance related issue. In this case, Oracle support recommends that you run RDA as the UNIX user who owns the Oracle software.

  4. How much space do I need run RDA?
    5. RDA 4.x does not require too much space on the host environment to be installed; 2 – 4 MB depending on the RDA package you decide to install from (.tar, tar.gz, or .zip) and whether you require the RDA binary version file.

    Regarding RDA output directory requirements, we have observed 80% of the data collected will require less than 150 MB for the final output files generated. We would recommend you allocate at least 150MB to be on the safe side. Sometimes depending on the size of your data and trace files (alert.log, *.trc, install*.log, apache logs, networking logs, etc) of the Oracle installation the final size of your RDA collection may reach over 1000 MB in size. Review the your Oracle trace and log files sizes and calculate to have space to have copies of those files, formatted RDA html files, and a compressed RDA package.

  5. What platforms does RDA support, what about OpenVMS?
    6. At this time, RDA has been successfully tested to run on the following platforms:

    • HP-UX (10.* and 11.*)
    • HP Itanium
    • HP OpenVMS Alpha 7.3-2 and above
    • HP OpenVMS Itanium
    • HP Tru64 UNIX
    • IBM AIX
    • IBM zSeries Based Linux
    • Intel Linux (RedHat and SuSE)
    • Linux PPC
    • Linux Itanium
    • Mac OS X/Darwin
    • Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation and Server
    • Microsoft Windows 2003 Server
    • Microsoft Windows Vista
    • Microsoft Windows XP Professional
    • Sequent Dynix/Ptx
    • Sun Solaris (2.6 – 2.10)

    RDA can also be run on other platforms that support Perl 5.005 and above, however, Oracle Support recommends testing them on a non-production server first, as their performance is unpredictable. For example, you will receive errors when RDA attempts to run utilities and commands that are not supported on those platforms

  6. Where can I download the RDA package?
    7. You can download RDA from Knowledge Article 314422.1, the Main RDA 4.x page. Select the RDA zip file for your platform by clicking on the related link. Each zip file contains all the files you need, so only choose one to download.

  7. I don’t have Perl. Where can I get a binary or complied version of RDA?
    8. rda.sh and rda.cmd do not assume that components containing Perl are installed. As long as RDA finds an ORACLE_HOME and Perl 5.005 and above in the path, it tries to locate itself where the library modules are and sets the environment appropriately. Therefore, we can run RDA even when perl -V does not work correctly and when @INC is not configured. In most recent builds, it also ignores Perl from the path when it can’t find some standard required Perl modules. That also prevents using a nonstandard miniperl environment. For performance reasons, we restrict the search to some well known areas.

    If you still can’t run RDA because of problems with Perl, you can download the following binary version for your platform.

    1. You must first ensure you have RDA downloaded and installed on the environment you will be running RDA (see Knowledge Article 314422.1 for the latest available version).
    2. Select and download one of the below binary/compiled versions specific to your operating system where RDA will execute from.
      • The zip file below contains the following files specific to the platform:
        • readme.txt
        • rda_<platform shortname> –> Binary RDA for use on more recent operating systems. Windows binary has “.exe” extension (e.g. rda_win.exe)
        • rda_<platform shortname>56 –> Binary RDA with old libraries intended for use on older operating systems
    3. Place the binary file from step 2 into the same directory as the “rda.pl” file is located from step 1. (e.g. Place rda_win.exe in the same directory as rda.pl).
    4. To execute, enter “rda_<platform shortname> -S” rather than “rda.pl” or “rda.sh” or “rda.cmd”. (e.g. Execute rda_win.exe -S).
    Note: PERL5LIB environment variable must not be set in order to use the following compiled binaries of rda.pl. Make sure your PERL5LIB does not point to any Perl installation.

  8. How do I run an RDA collection?
    The following published document detail how to run RDA. There are also, detailed instructions in the README_Unix.txt and README_Windows.txt files contained inside RDA packages.

    Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4.x – Overview – Knowledge Article 314422.1

  9. How do I force RDA to run Setup again?
    10. RDA will read the values it finds in “setup.cfg” first before requiring to answer any setup questions. You can force RDA to start the setup process again in two(2) ways.

    1. Deleting or renaming the “setup.cfg” file

      2. $ ./rda.pl -S or
      c:\>rda.cmd -S or
      $ ./rda.sh -S

    2. Running the following RDA command:
      $ ./rda.pl -Sfn or
      c:\>rda.cmd -Sfn or
      $ ./rda.sh -Sfn
  10. How long does it take to run RDA collection?
    11. One common question people ask is “How fast does RDA run on Machine x”. This is a very subjective and complex answer that depends on several factors. In general, the processing power of the Machine/Server that RDA has be execute on. e.g. It will run faster on a 4 CPU machine versus a single CPU machine.

    The availability of free system resources at the time RDA is going to execute. If you system is running at 95% CPU utilization, RDA will take much longer on that system versus a system where it is at 45% CPU utilization. Other factors like I/O and memory also play an important role.

    The number of RDA modules that need to be executed. RDA is comprised of individual modules processing specific tasks from the Operating system (OS) to Database long files (LOG) collection. Each module can take a varying amount of time, depending on the amount of data that needs to be processed. In most RDA collections several modules are executing in sequence or parallel; depending on the operating system and modules in question. See Content modules for a full list of RDA modules.

    Other potential areas that affect RDA collection the size of the files that need to be parsed by RDA ( 100kb vs 10000KB files). If there are possible operating system calls errors or malfunctions, cases such as: sometimes commands line netstat -an can take over 15 mins to process, or if the operating system TCP/IP setting (ip,hostname, or dns) has not been properly configured.

    In general RDA has been configured with a timeout mechanism to avoid certain modules from taking too long to process. The default timeout mechanism has been set to thirty (30) seconds for each command and sql execution.

    Therefore we cannot give exact numbers on how long RDA will take to execute on your environment. However, here are some averages:

    • Based on 100 random real world customer RDA 4.x outputs uploaded to Support Services, average time was: 438 seconds or 7 mins.
    • Based on internal tests.
      rda_4.1-051205
      Operating system: RHEL AS 3.0 Update 4 – Kernel 2.4.21-20.ELsmp on an i686
      CPU: 1 x Xeon 2.80GHz
      Memory: 1536 MB
      Database: Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.1.0.2.0 – Production
      With the Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options
      Memory (Free) total used free shared buffers cached
      Mem: 1538936 1495756 43180 0 98844 726916
      -/+ buffers/cache: 669996 868940
      Disks: 2 x 73GB 7200RPM SCSI drives
      Load (top): 16:30:46 up 355 days, 1:06, 1 user, load average: 0.10, 0.30, 0.20
      141 processes: 127 sleeping, 1 running, 13 zombie, 0 stopped
      RDA modules executed: Processing Initialization module …
      Processing CFG module …
      Processing Sampling module …
      Processing OS module …
      Processing PROF module …
      Processing PERF module …
      Processing NET module …
      Processing networking information (pings, network files, sql*net files)…
      Listener and network checks may take a few minutes. please be patient…
      Processing listener status, services and log for listener LISTENER
      Processing Oracle installation module …
      Processing RDBMS module …
      Processing LOG module …
      Processing Web Server module …
      Processing Web Server (iAS 1.x) module …
      Processing HTTP Server …
      Processing End module …
      Average execution Time(seconds) over 5 runs: 357 seconds or ~6 minutes
  11. How do I force RDA to collect data again?
    12. RDA will read the values it finds in <output> directory first, if it finds data that has not been collected it will attempt to collect that data. However if you want RDA to collect data again you can execute the following commands. (-v: verbose , C: collect , R: render into html, P: Package contents of output directory into archive, and f : force execution of all commands.

    $ ./rda.sh -vCRPf or
    c:\>rda.cmd -vCRPf or
    $ ./rda.pl -vCRPf or
    $./rda.sh -vf or
    c:\>rda.cmd -vf

    Finally, if you need to run data collection for specific module again you can just run the following command (OS: Operating system and DBA: Database)

    $ ./rda.sh -vCRP OS DB or
    c:\>rda.cmd -vCRP OS DBA

    Note: The collection process will execute must faster and you will not receive any notices when it completes. This also overwrite the data in the output directory.
  12. Where is the RDA output located?
    13. The output is a set of HTML files that are located in the RDA output directory which you specified at setup. You can review the data collected, by using a Web Browser to open the following file located in:

    <output_directory>/<report_group>__start.htm

    The final output is also packaged in an archive located in the <output_directory> chosen during RDA setup — the packaged output file will have a .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, or .tar.Z extension. If the data collection was generated to assist in resolving a Service Request, send the report archive (note: file name varies, but ends in .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, or .tar.Z ; e.a: RDA.RDA_db_autoxyz.zip) to Oracle Support by uploading the file via My Oracle Support. If FTP’ing the file, please be sure to FTP in BINARY format. Do not rename the file, as the file name helps Oracle Support quickly identify that RDA output is attached to the service request.

    Note: The final output directory may not contain an archive file (.zip, .tar, .tar.gz, or .tar.Z ). If the archive is missing, please archive all the files in the <output_directory> manually and send them to Oracle Support. You can use a packaging/archive utility program like http://www.info-zip.org/Zip.html to perform this task.
  13. Is there a localized version of RDA 4.x?
    14. No. Currently this utility is written in the English language only, including the built in documentation. In the future, Oracle might offer other versions based on customer demand.

  14. Will RDA 4 find the solution to my TAR?
    15. No. RDA is a tool to assist in resolving the customer’s issue. As stated above, RDA’s purpose is to collect accurate information about the Oracle installation environment. In many cases RDA will collect information that you think is unnecessary, but may be needed during a later stage of the tar or by the next person reviewing the tar (e.g. escalations, development, etc.). In its first phase, RDA is a collection agent. The long term plan is that the next phase RDA will involve a diagnostic component to analyze the information collected.

  15. There are sections missing my RDA report, Why ?
    16. There may be some confusion about RDA 4.x not displaying all reports or sections. A new feature was added to improve search efficiency and consistency between modules; if a report or section does not contain information, then it is not generated. This was already the case for some modules in the previous version of RDA 3.14.x and it has been generalized. Another factor for this change is that relevant directories could be different from platforms (e.g. UNIX >< Windows) and can even differ between RAC and non-RAC environments.

    If an unexpected error (e.g. table not found) is encountered, it will be visible in the reports. Some results can be incomplete due to execution timeouts. An overview of SQL execution is provided in the Report Settings report.

    SQL Request Overview
    Module Requests Errors Time-Out Skipped Comment
    S000INI 1 0 0 0 SQL execution limited to 30s
    S110PERF 3 0 0 0
    S125GTW 1 0 0 0
    S200DB 34 0 0 0 SQL execution limited to 30s
    S300IAS 2 0 0 0 SQL execution limited to 30s
    S400RAC 3 0 0 0

    On another hand, the absences of optional components are not considered as an error. The error explanation (-E) and the readme indicates how to change SQL_TIMEOUT and other timeout parameters.

  16. What does the RDA-nnnnn error mean when I executed RDA?
    17. RDA has a built in error handling mechanism. You can discover the meaning and possible solution to the error by using the following RDA command line argument: rda.pl -E {ERROR #} . i.e:

    $ ./rda.pl -E RDA-14
RDA-00014: %d issue(s) found in the RDA installation
*Cause: issues encountered when checking the RDA installation
*Action: A fresh install of RDA is probably the easiest way to fix file
alteration problems. However, permission problems can result from
other factors:
- If RDA has been installed by another user, the default settings
could be too restrictive. Please review the local context with
that user and your appropriate local authorities.
- Execution permissions can be missing on startup scripts for other
platforms and when perl is not available from the command line.
  17. What does the RDA-00010 error mean?
    18. This error generally occurs when running a RDA binary (i.e. rda_win.exe, rda_sunos, etc). This error generally is followed by lines containing “PERL2EXE_STORAGE” and or a Perl *.pm module name.

    Cause: The following OS environment variable PERL5LIB is set or your OS environment points to Perl installation. This causes a conflict for the RDA binary to located needed Perl modules binded within the executable.

    Action: Unset PERL5LIB environment variable.

  18. What does the RDA-00006 error mean?
    19. This error generally occurs when RDA cannot find a suitable archiving program like zip or tar in your OS path. You can do two(2) things to resolve this issue: (1) Make you your OS PATH variable contains the location to a “command line” zip or tar program. (2) You can manually compress the RDA <output_directory> directory and sent that to Oracle Support.

    See: $ ./rda.pl -E RDA-00006 or c:\>rda.cmd -E RDA-00006
    Cause: No packaging tool paths have been found.
    Action: The path to zip or tar commands has not been collected. This typically occurs when the end report has not yet been produced or if these commands have not been found in the current execution path (cf. PATH).
  19. What does the OCM-09004 error mean?
    20. This error generally mean that certain pre-requisites for OCM installation failed. The details of the failed prerequisites can be retrieved in the ‘Report Setting’ section of RDA output and that more info can be obtained with -E option

    See: $ ./rda.pl -E OCM-09004 or c:\>rda.cmd -E OCM-09004
    OCM-09004: Java Development Kit not found
    *Cause: Java neither found under the $ORACLE_HOME/jdk directory nor
    JAVA_HOME is set.
    *Action: Set JAVA_HOME to a JDK that is 1.2.2 or greater and re-run the OCM
    module setup.

  20. How to change the default parameters like SQL_TIMEOUT?
    21. There a few ways to set the default parameters in RDA, which useful for certain situations. Changing it temporarily from the command line using “-e” switch (SEE RDA MAN PAGE ) or using built in help system (rda.pl -h):

    /rda.pl -vCRP -e SQL_TIMEOUT=120,SQL_ATTEMPTS=25

    This command collects, generates the new reports and provides up to 120 seconds for executing each SQL statement and retries to execute the same sql statement 25 times temporarily for this time only.

    Modifying the setup.cfg file using a text editor like “vi” or “wordpad”. You will find section with setup.cfg file that relates to timeout (#N.SQL timeout (in seconds)).
    Changing it more permanently from the command like using setup level “-p” switch (SEE RDA MAN PAGE ) or using built in help system (rda.pl -h):]

    ./rda.sh -S -p advanced DB or
    rda.cmd -S -p advanced DB or
    rda.pl -S -p advanced DB

    Turns on advanced setup prompts, more settings can be specified interactively by using the advanced level.

  21. Can RDA be setup without asking any questions?
    22. Yes. RDA was designed to determine values to setup question from the customer OS environment. You can also, pass all default parameters and values in a single command like this:

    $ ./rda.pl -Sy -e SQL_SYSDBA=1,SQL_LOGIN=/ OS INST DB

  22. How can I reduce the size or amount of RDA output files?
    23. RDA has 2 mechanisms to reduce the size and quantity of trace and log files it collects and packages in the output file. The first is built into the advance setup profiles of the various collection modules, specifically for the (INI, DB, WEBC, IAS, GTW, RAC) modules and can be called using the following command(s):

    $ rda.sh -S -p expert INI DB or
    rda.cmd -S -p expert INI DB or
    rda.pl -S -p expert INI DB

    The second is using the using “-e” switch when calling RDA (rda.sh, rda.cmd, or rda.pl):

    See modules: DB:[DB_TRACE_AGE, ALERT_TAIL], INI:[RDA_TAIL], GTW:[GATEWAY_TAIL], IAS:[DCM_TAIL], WEBC:[WEBCACHE_TAIL], RAC:[CLUSTER_TAIL]

    ./rda.sh -e DB_TRACE_AGE=5, ALERT_TAIL=1000 or
    ./rda.cmd -e DB_TRACE_AGE=5, ALERT_TAIL=1000

  23. Can RDA be scheduled to run automatically via CRON or AT?
    24. Yes. You need to check with your OS documentation regarding running scheduling applications like CRON and AT. Please note you may need purge RDA log files in the <output> directory and encode passwords in your setup.cf when required.

  24. How do I stop RDA from collecting everything?
    25. RDA has been designed to reduce the number of setup questions and also can be called to only collect certain modules. RDA will call any dependent modules first; for instance OS module will always call the INI module. The list of available diagnostic modules is located here Module Man Pages or can be listed by executing (rda.pl -L):

    $./rda.sh -vCRP OS PERF DBA LOG BR RAC or
    C:\>rda.cmd -vCRP OS PERF DBA LOG BR RAC or
    $./rda.pl -S -p advanced OS or
    $ ./rda.pl -S -p advanced INI DB RAC

  25. How do I verify the RDA package that I installed is not corrupted?
    26. RDA has an internal file verification system to handle most types of file corruptions, as long as ./rda.pl, rda.sh, or rda.cmd can be called or not corrupt themselves: It can be run using the following command.

    $ ./rda.sh -vc or
    C:\>rda.cmd -vc or
    $ ./rda.pl -vc

  26. Why is RDA taking a long time to run the setup process?
    27. Command execution can be slow to start when there are difficulties to detect the TCP/IP domain of the server that RDA is running on. The setup process can takes several minutes in some circumstances. The RDA_DOMAIN environment variable can avoid that.

    On UNIX:

    $RDA_DOMAIN=oracle.com ./rda.sh -S or
    $RDA_DOMAIN=oracle.com
    $export RDA_DOMAIN
    $./rda.sh -S

    On Windows:
    C:\set\RDA_DOMAIN=oracle.com
    C:\rda.cmd -S

  27. Why is RDA repeating the same title message several times during setup?
    28. Sometimes a situation will occur where a user will notice a message like ” S000INI: Initializes the Data Collection” being repeated over and over and without additional new messages.

    If you see such strange behavior during setup process, than your current Perl installation contains Perl modules (.pm) that have been corrupted, please either install a newer Perl installation or use the RDA binary version.

  28. When I run RDA it creates a “core dump” or segmentation violation, what now?
    29. There could be several things that could cause an OS “core dump”(you local Perl installation is core dumping, the OS libraries/modules is not correctly configured, or JAVA is crashing.

    1. Run a few simple tests to verify that Perl is working:
      ./rda.pl -h (does this work?)
      ./rda.pl -c (does this work?)
      ./rda.pl -V (does this work?)
    2. If any of the above steps cause a hang or core dump, than your current Perl installation contains Perl modules (.pm) that have been corrupted, please either install a newer Perl installation or use the RDA binary version
    3. Test where the failure is occurring during data collection.
      rda.sh -vdt or
      rda.cmd -vdt This command will run a debug and trace of all the commands executed, and will let you see when it core dumps)
    4. Provide the output of the above command to Oracle Support for Review.
    Note: rda.pl can be substituted by rda.sh on UNIX and rda.cmd on Windows.
  29. When I run RDA there is not .zip file in my [RDA_OUTPUT] directory, what now?
    The final output directory may not contain an archive file (.zip, .tar, tar.gz, or tar.Z ) due to problems finding a compression program in your OS environment PATH. If the archive is missing, please archive all the files in the <output_directory> manually using a compression program like zip or Tar and send that to Oracle Support. You can use a packaging/archive utility program like http://www.info-zip.org/Zip.html to perform this task.

  30. How do I upgrade my RDA 4.x installation from the prior release?
    31. The most simplest and reliable way to upgrade your RDA installation is delete or move your old installation to a new location. Then install the new release into the location you had the prior release installed. If you want to reuse you old setup.cfg file, you can place the older version into the new <RDA> directory and it will try to upgrade your setup.cfg to the new features.

  31. When I run the binary version of RDA it asks for newer libraries, what now?
    32. The binary or compiled build of RDA were designed to have fewest library dependencies as possible. However, certain required libraries like libpthread maybe required. Additional binary versions of RDA has been build using older OS library versions for customer who have problems with our Primary binary version of RDA. Use the following secondary builds of RDA ONLY IF you have problems with primary RDA binary builds.

    Knowledge Article 335791.1 – Secondary Binary RDA version

  32. Why is RDA reporting incorrect timestamp’s of directory and file listing?
    33. If you noticed that notice the times listed under the Listing of Files from Oracle
    Log/Trace Directories are off by 5 or 7 hours, it is because RDA reports all times in GMT instead of local time zone. Also you will notice there are 2 dates in the directory listing, it because they represent:

    ctime    inode change time in seconds since the epoch
    mtime    last modify time in seconds since the epoch

  33. Can I connect to a remote database using RDA?
    34. It is recommended that RDA should be run from the local database ORACLE_HOME for the database collection is needed.  RDA uses the local “sqlplus” executable to perform database collection. In order for “sqlplus scott/tiger@remote_db as sysdba” format to work, you need to setup a sqlnet password file for the remote database.  We don’t recommend a remote connection to the database for the following reasons:

    • A remote connection may only be allowed to collect the database information.
    • Some modules may not have permissions to collect local files.
    • No confirmation about what environment you have connected to.
    That being said, RDA supports the following combinations which can be used for SQL_LOGIN/SQL_SYSDBA values:

    user
    user AS SYSDBA
    user@db
    user@db AS SYSDBA
    /
    / AS SYSDBA
    /@db
    /@db AS SYSDBA

    No password will be required for all ‘/’ combinations.

    If @db format is specified and the db must be identical to ORACLE_SID enviroment variable, RDA will assume that the TNS entry needs to be used instead of ORACLE_SID (and ORACLE_SID is removed from the environment).

  34. I am having difficulty running RDA 4. What do I do?
    35. Note: If you have issues with the Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) , please file a Service Request via My Oracle Support by selecting OSS Support Tools from the product list of values on the Create a SR screen (OSS is above Oracle in the product list). Then select the “*Remote Diagnotic Agent (RDA) Issue*” as the problem type and complete the SR.

    Please DO NOT let an RDA issue prevent you from progressing on your technical issue that you are running RDA for. Please inform the engineer that owns your technical issue that you are having trouble with RDA and request that he/she give you instructions on collecting necessary data manually to resolve the issue. RDA is designed to speed up the resolution time of technical issues and we do not want it to interfere with resolution. However, it is important that we get the RDA issues resolved so that it can be used to help speed up resolution for future technical issues.
  35. How do I provide RDA output to Oracle Support?
    36. RDA Output can be provided to Oracle Support when creating a Service Request or Updating a Service Request.  During Service Request creation, the second step allows you to upload files that may be needed by Oracle Support. We highly recommend that you attached the output file as a single file.  Do not bundle with other files such as trace or log files into a single or common archive file (.tar, .zip, .jar, etc.).  During a Service Request Update, click on the link “upload to support”.  You can attach your RDA Output in the new window that opens.  Remember to upload your RDA output as a separate file.

    @ ORACLE EMPLOYEES: 
@ View existing defect issues and enhancement requests  
@ via the bug database or WebIV.Log defects and 
@ enhancements using the SE Defect and Enhancement 
@ Logging Process. File bugs using Product 1330, 
@ Component RDASYS, make sure to choose E - email
@ notification. Additionally, you can file a TAR 
@ using product 1330, comp RDASYS and assign it to 
@ QUEUE: GRIDTOHUB
  36. There are connection issues when attempting to connect to OID database SID.
    37. OID SID DB information is required in the “host:port::ServiceName” format, for the prompt “Enter the OID database SID”. If you do not want RDA to collect information from the database, then enter a dash (‘-’).

  37. Why does RDA not collect database information when getting ORA-28002 or ORA-28011?
    38. RDA considers all ORA and SP2 errors at connection time are connection problems and stop collecting database information

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