This afternoon on a Oracle 11.2.0.2 installation, i was trying to run the Oracle RMAN utility. Rman cli was just hanging and not going into RMAN.

[oracle@linux2 ~]$ . oraenv
ORACLE_SID = [oracle] ? 11202
The Oracle base has been set to /opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2
[oracle@linux2 ~]$ rman
 

After entering above rman command, nothing happened. It just hung on the command prompt. I did not receive any error at all. Hmm… whats happening? I issued an CTRL-C to cancel it and tried again. Still same result. Okay lets trace it using Linux strace utility.

oracle@linux2 ~]$ strace rman
execve("/usr/X11R6/bin/rman", ["rman"], [/* 31 vars */]) = 0
uname({sys="Linux", node="linux2.vishalgupta.com", ...}) = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x5a3000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2a95556000
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK)      = 0
open("/etc/ld.so.preload", O_RDONLY)    = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0444, st_size=23, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 23, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x2a95557000
close(3)                                = 0
readlink("/proc/self/exe", "/usr/X11R6/bin/rman", 4096) = 19
open("/stub/lib64/libcwait.so", O_RDONLY) = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\3>\1\20\6"..., 832) = 832
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=4176, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 1051008, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x2a95558000
mprotect(0x2a95559000, 1046912, PROT_NONE) = 0
mmap(0x2a95658000, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x2a95658000
close(3)                                = 0
munmap(0x2a95557000, 23)                = 0
open("/opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2/home/lib/tls/x86_64/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2/home/lib/tls/x86_64", 0x7fbfffec30) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2/home/lib/tls/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2/home/lib/tls", 0x7fbfffec30) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2/home/lib/x86_64/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2/home/lib/x86_64", 0x7fbfffec30) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2/home/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2/home/lib", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=12288, ...}) = 0
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)      = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=146311, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 146311, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x2a95659000
close(3)                                = 0
open("/lib64/tls/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)  = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\3>\1p\305\1"..., 832) = 832
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1636072, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2a9567d000
mmap(NULL, 2330696, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x2a9567e000
mprotect(0x2a957ae000, 1085512, PROT_NONE) = 0
mmap(0x2a958ad000, 24576, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x12f000) = 0x2a958ad000
mmap(0x2a958b3000, 16456, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2a958b3000
close(3)                                = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2a958b8000
mprotect(0x2a958ad000, 16384, PROT_READ) = 0
mprotect(0x3e48a14000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0
arch_prctl(ARCH_SET_FS, 0x2a958b86e0)   = 0
munmap(0x2a95659000, 146311)            = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x5a3000
brk(0x5c4000)                           = 0x5c4000
fstat(0, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 1), ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x2a95659000
read(0,  <unfinished ...>
[oracle@linux2 ~]$

Had to again issue a CTRL-c to come out of trace, as it was just hanging again. I tried connecting to database using sqlplus, that worked fine.

oracle@linux2 ~]$ sqlplus / as sysdba
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Mon Jun 20 06:08:58 2011
Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options
SQL>

Hmm… Lets recompile the Oracle binaries, it case something funny was going on with libraries. And then we will re-run our RMAN cli.

[oracle@linux2 tns_admin]$ relink
writing relink log to: /opt/oracle/product/rhel4/database/11.2.0.2/home/install/relink.log
[oracle@linux2 tns_admin]$ rman

Hmm… still the same.

It turns out the there is Linux RMAN command as well, which is installed by xorg-x11-devel rpm package.

[oracle@linux2 ~]$ which rman
/usr/X11R6/bin/rman
[oracle@linux2 bin]$ man rman
PolyglotMan(1)                                                                                                                                                    PolyglotMan(1)

NAME
       PolyglotMan, rman - reverse compile man pages from formatted form to a number of source formats

So lets run the actual Oracle RMAN command.

[oracle@linux2 bin]$ $ORACLE_HOME/bin/rman

Recovery Manager: Release 11.2.0.2.0 - Production on Mon Jun 20 07:14:58 2011

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

RMAN>

So, moral of the story is set your PATH correctly. I hope someone will find it useful, in case their rman command is hung.