9
DBVERIFY: Offline Database Verification Utility

This chapter describes how to use DBVERIFY, the offline database verification utility. The following topics about DBVERIFY are included:

• Restrictions

• Syntax

• Sample DBVERIFY Output

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.

Additional Information: The name and location of DBVERIFY is dependent on your operating system (for example, dbv on Sun/Sequent systems). See your operating system-specific Oracle documentation for the location of DBVERIFY for your system.

Restrictions

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.

Syntax

Parameters

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 has a non-2kb block size. If you do not specify BLOCKSIZE for non-2kb files, you will see the error DBV-00103.
LOGFILE	Specifies the file to which logging information should be written. The default sends output to the terminal display.
FEEDBACK	Specifying the keyword FEEDBACK causes DBVERIFY to send a progress display to the terminal in the form of a single dot "." for n number of pages verified during the DBVERIFY run. If n = 0, there will be no progress display.
HELP	Provides onscreen 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.

Sample DBVERIFY Output

The following example shows how to get online help:

% dbv help=y 
 
DBVERIFY: Release 7.3.1.0.0 - Wed Aug  2 09:14:36 1995 
 
Copyright (c) Oracle Corporation 1979, 1994.  All rights reserved. 
 
Keyword   Description        (Default) 
---------------------------------------------- 
FILE      File to Verify     (NONE) 
START     Start Block        (First Block of File) 
END       End Block          (Last Block of File) 
BLOCKSIZE Logical Block Size (2048)
LOGFILE   Output Log         (NONE) 

The following example is sample output of verification for the file t_db1.f. The feedback parameter has been given the value 100 to display one dot onscreen for every 100 pages processed:

% dbv file=t_db1.f feedback=100 
 
DBVERIFY: Release 7.3.1.0.0 - Wed Aug  2 09:15:04 1995 
 
Copyright (c) Oracle Corporation 1979, 1994.  All rights reserved. 
 
DBVERIFY - Verification starting : FILE = t_db1.f 

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

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:

• Pages = Blocks

• Total Pages Examined = number of blocks in the file

• Total Pages Processed = blocks that were verified (formatted blocks)

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