RMAN-06004: ORACLE error from recovery catalog database

Using a recovery catalog makes it startightforward to restore the controlfile.When you issue the restore controlfile command, RMAN will retieve from teh recovery catalog the location and name of the file that contains the control file backup and restores the control file approproately.

Because the recovery catalog knows the location of the RMAN backups piece, It doesn’t matter whether the backup piece is in a flash recovery area or in a configured channel location.

When you’re connected to the recovery catalog, you can view backup information about your control files even while your target database is in nomount mode. To list backups of your controlfiles ,use the lsit command as shown here.

RMAN>connect target /
RMAN>connect catalog backup/backup@recover
RMAN>startup nomount
RMAN>list backup of ocntrolfile;

If you have registered two database in the recovery datalog with the same name, then you might receive an error such as this when you attempt to list backups or restore the control file

RMAN-06004: ORACLE error from recovery catalog database
RMAN-20005: target database name is ambiguous

In this situation, you will need to first set your database identifier(dbid) before you can restore your control file.

How to determine your DBID

You can verify that you have multiple databases with the same name in your recovery catalog by querying the recovery catalog RC_DATABASE view

sql>connect backup/backup@recover;
sql> select db_key,dbid,name from rc_database;
DB_KEY       DBID            NAME
——-           —–                 ——-
1                1124743449      TEST
4241        1140772490      TEST