Backing Up Oracle - Computing at Cornell

B.4 List of logfiles
A key thing to remember is that TSM is just a storage repository for RMAN
backups. RMAN is responsible for creating all the backup objects and the
archivelogs. TDP for Oracle is responsible for taking what RMAN gives and
passing that on to the TSM server. TSM server is responsible for storing the
backup objects and the archivelogs, and then retrieving them when asked. If
RMAN creates a corrupt backup object or corrupt archivelog, TSM will store it
and retrieve it as corrupt. As TSM is not necessary to do an RMAN backup,
you can eliminate TSM as a problem by creating an RMAN backup on a local
file system. If RMAN fails creating a backup to disk, then it will probably also
fail using TDP for Oracle. In this situation, you would then check the Oracle
setup.
Another useful way to isolate a problem is to compare a failing machine with a
working one. Then you can see what is the same and what is different. Are
they using the same API level, TDP for Oracle level, Oracle level and fixpack,
TSM server? Do the nodes belong to the same domain and have the same
settings? What are the client options file differences between the failing and
the working machine?
Try to use as many of the defaults as possible. Using environment variables
when not required increases the likelihood of configuration errors.
The following is a collection of logfiles from which to get valuable information
for problem determination:
dsierror.log
The file reside in the directory specified by the DSMI_LOG environment
variable. It contains the most valuable information for problem
determination for our purpose. Each entry may refer to a TSM API error
number. A description of those errors can be found in Appendix D, “API
Return Codes”, in the book: Tivoli Storage Manager: Using the Application
Program Interface, SH26-4123.
dsmsched.log
By default, TSM stores the schedule log information in a file named
dsmsched.log. The default name can be overwritten by specifying the
SCHEDLOGNMAME option in the client option files.
sbtio.log
This file is created by Oracle and normally resides in the udump directory
of the database instance.
204 Backing Up Oracle using Tivoli Storage Management