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DBVERIFY: Offline Database Verification Utility

DBVERIFY is an external command-line utility that performs a physical data structure integrity check on an offline database. It can be used against backup files and online files (or pieces of files). You use DBVERIFY primarily when you need to ensure that a backup database (or datafile) is valid before it is restored or as a diagnostic aid when you have encountered data corruption problems.

Because DBVERIFY can be run against an offline database, integrity checks are significantly faster.

DBVERIFY checks are limited to cache-managed blocks (that is, data blocks). Because DBVERIFY is only for use with datafiles, it will not work against control files or redo logs.

There are two command-line interfaces to DBVERIFY. With the first interface, you specify disk blocks of a single datafile for checking. With the second interface, you specify a segment for checking. The following sections provide descriptions of these interfaces:

• Using DBVERIFY to Validate Disk Blocks of a Single Datafile
• Using DBVERIFY to Validate a Segment

  Note: The command used to invoke DBVERIFY is dependent on your operating system (for example, on Sun/Sequent systems, the command is dbv). See your Oracle operating system-specific documentation.

Using DBVERIFY to Validate Disk Blocks of a Single Datafile

In this mode, DBVERIFY scans one or more disk blocks of a single datafile and performs page checks.

Syntax

The syntax for DBVERIFY when you want to validate disk blocks of a single datafile is as follows:

Text description of the illustration dbv.gif

Parameters

Descriptions of the parameters are as follows:

Parameter	Description
FILE	The name of the database file to verify.
START	The starting block address to verify. Specify block addresses in Oracle blocks (as opposed to operating system blocks). If you do not specify START, DBVERIFY defaults to the first block in the file.
END	The ending block address to verify. If you do not specify END, DBVERIFY defaults to the last block in the file.
BLOCKSIZE	BLOCKSIZE is required only if the file to be verified does not have a block size of 2 KB. If the file does not have block size of 2 KB and you do not specify BLOCKSIZE, you will receive the error DBV-00103.
LOGFILE	Specifies the file to which logging information should be written. The default sends output to the terminal display.
FEEDBACK	Causes DBVERIFY to send a progress display to the terminal in the form of a single period (.) for n number of pages verified during the DBVERIFY run. If n = 0, there is no progress display.
HELP	Provides online help.
PARFILE	Specifies the name of the parameter file to use. You can store various values for DBVERIFY parameters in flat files. This allows you to customize parameter files to handle different types of datafiles and to perform specific types of integrity checks on datafiles.

Command-Line Interface

The following example shows a sample use of the command-line interface to this mode of DBVERIFY.

% dbv FILE=t_db1.dbf FEEDBACK=100

Sample DBVERIFY Output

The following example is sample output of verification for the file t_db1.dbf. The feedback parameter has been given the value 100 to display one period (.) for every 100 pages processed:

% dbv FILE=t_db1.dbf FEEDBACK=100 
 
DBVERIFY: Release 9.2.0.1.0 - Production on Wed Feb 27 13:55:26 2002

(c) Copyright 2002 Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.
 
DBVERIFY - Verification starting : FILE = t_db1.dbf 

................................................................................
 

DBVERIFY - Verification complete 
 
Total Pages Examined         : 9216 
Total Pages Processed (Data) : 2044 
Total Pages Failing   (Data) : 0 
Total Pages Processed (Index): 733 
Total Pages Failing   (Index): 0 
Total Pages Empty            : 5686 
Total Pages Marked Corrupt   : 0 

Total Pages Influx           : 0 

Notes:

Using DBVERIFY to Validate a Segment

In this mode, DBVERIFY allows you to specify a table segment or index segment for verification. It checks to make sure that a row chain pointer is within the segment being verified.

This mode requires that you specify a segment (data or index) to be validated. It also requires that you log on to the database with SYSDBA privileges, because information about the segment must be retrieved from the database.

During this mode, the segment is locked. If the specified segment is an index, the parent table is locked. Note that some indexes, such as IOTs, do not have parent tables.

Syntax

The syntax for DBVERIFY when you want to validate a segment is as follows:

Text description of the illustration dbv2.gif

Parameters

Descriptions of the parameters are as follows:

Parameter	Description
USERID	Specifies your username and password.
SEGMENT_ID	Specifies the segment that you want to verify. You can identify the tsn, segfile, and segblock by joining and querying the appropriate data dictionary tables, for example, USER_TABLES and USER_SEGMENTS.
LOGFILE	Specifies the file to which logging information should be written. The default sends output to the terminal display.
FEEDBACK	Causes DBVERIFY to send a progress display to the terminal in the form of a single period (.) for n number of pages verified during the DBVERIFY run. If n = 0, there is no progress display.
HELP	Provides online help.
PARFILE	Specifies the name of the parameter file to use. You can store various values for DBVERIFY parameters in flat files. This allows you to customize parameter files to handle different types of datafiles and to perform specific types of integrity checks on datafiles.

Command-Line Interface

The following example shows a sample use of the command-line interface to this mode of DBVERIFY.

dbv USERID=username/password SEGMENT_ID=tsn.segfile.segblock