Delete BE 11d backups out of RMAN

[oracle_8202]

It appears that 11d now uses RMAN to do its Oracle backups. Does anybody know how to delete the 11d backups out of RMAN? If I try and delete the job I get a

"RMAN-06160: no backup pieces found for backup set key: key#" error.

If I try and delete the obsolete backups I get a

"RMAN-06091: no channel allocated for maintenance (of an appropriate type)" error.

This is a backup to disk folder created in BE. It appears that BE is opening a channel called ch0 and giving it a device type of "SBT_TAPE" (which it really isn�t because it is a backup to disk folder). But after the backup is done the channel is released so RMAN cannot find the backup and will not let me delete the backups. I have tried to cross check all the backups and this succeeds but the backups do not change to expired. I have also tried making them unavailable but no luck there either (still cannot delete). Thank you.

[oracle_8202]

Okay, I kind of figured this out. I corrected the above problem by configuring the SBT_TAPE device. Now I need to know how to point the device at the data created by BE. Right now RMAN is marking all the data from BE as "EXPIRED". I am going to try various format strings and see if I can get RMAN to recognize the BE data. It looks as if it is using a format string of "BE_U" (which I don't recognize as a valid string). If anybody knows how to do this please let me know. Thank you.

[oracle_8202]

Okay, I got this solved to my satisfaction. I simply configured the channel with the SEND string from the backup job log. Now RMAN can see the backups, doesn't mark them as EXPIRED and I can delete the jobs from RMAN after deleting them from BE 11d. However, I would still like better documentation about how BE uses and interfaces with RMAN. I guess I will just wait and see if Symantec releases such a documentation.

[Arju]

arjudba.blogspot.com/2010/01/rman-06091-no-channel-allocated-for.html