Database Software

We have an active Oracle server and a standby Oracle server. We keep the standby database up to date with a cron script. The script tells the active database to do 'alter system switch logfile;'. We then rsync the archived logs to our standby server and have rman apply them.

This works everyday except Monday (of course!) and it only recently started failing on Mondays. The only change was that our Sunday backups used to be 'Full' backups but are now 'level 0' backups. Ever since that change, the first attempt to apply the archived logs to the standby server after the level 0 is taken on the active server gives us something like this:

ORA-00308: cannot open archived log
'/opt/oracle/flash_recovery_area/ORCL/archivelog/2012_04_16/o1_mf_1_60519_%u_.arc'
ORA-27037: unable to obtain file status

Of course, the file is not there and doesn't exist on the active server either. And of course, the nightly level1 backups fo not give us problems applying archived logs to the standby database the rest of the week.

The only way I know to recover from this is to apply the level 0 backup or take a new level 0 and apply it. After that, all subsequent archive logs just work. Any idea why changing from Full to Level 0 would break this? The Oracle docs insist that a Level 0 is identical to a Full except that level 1s can reference them as parents. This simply cannot be true based on what I'm seeing! I really want to keep the level 0 backups in play if possible. Level 1 cumulatives wont be useful without them.