Tales From A Lazy Fat DBA

Today while turning on Archivelog facility on one of my Oracle Database i recieved an error while reads “instance recovery required, cannot set ARCHIVELOG mode” and i find a very unique way to get rid of this problem.

SQL> alter database archivelog;
alter database archivelog
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00265: instance recovery required, cannot set ARCHIVELOG mode

Resolution Steps:
SHUTDOWN -> STARTUP -> SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE -> STARTUP MOUNT -> alter database archivelog

SQL> shutdown
ORA-01109: database not open
Database dismounted.
ORACLE instance shut down.

SQL> startup
ORACLE instance started.
Total System Global Area  306184192 bytes
Fixed Size                  1219112 bytes
Variable Size             104859096 bytes
Database Buffers          197132288 bytes
Redo Buffers                2973696 bytes
Database mounted.
Database opened.

SQL> shutdown immediate;
Database closed.
Database dismounted.
ORACLE instance shut down.

SQL> startup mount
ORACLE instance started.
Total System Global Area  306184192 bytes
Fixed Size                  1219112 bytes
Variable Size             109053400 bytes
Database Buffers          192937984 bytes
Redo Buffers                2973696 bytes
Database mounted.

SQL> alter database archivelog;
Database altered.

SQL> archive log list;
Database log mode              Archive Mode
Automatic archival             Enabled
Archive destination            USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST
Oldest online log sequence     2
Next log sequence to archive   4
Current log sequence           4