Bash Script to Upload RMAN Backups via FTP

Our customer asked if they can automatically upload latest RMAN backups via FTP to another server. Because they keep latest 3 backups in same directory, I wrote a small bash script which calls an SQL script to queries RMAN backups and then uploads only the backup pieces belong to the latest backup job. I wanted to share this script because it demonstrates some interesting methods such as handling arrays returned from SQLPLus.

Here’s the SQL script (rmanfind.sql) to query RMAN backups. Our customer takes archive log backups during the day, so I needed to state full backup jobs while querying.

SET HEA OFF
SET FEED OFF
SET LINES 500
SET PAGES 500
SET TRIM ON

SELECT handle
from V$BACKUP_PIECE
where rman_Status_stamp IN (
select  stamp from V$RMAN_STATUS where parent_stamp =
 (SELECT session_stamp
from V$RMAN_BACKUP_JOB_DETAILS
where start_time =
(select max(start_time) from 
V$RMAN_BACKUP_JOB_DETAILS where input_type = 'DB FULL')));

The bash script (rmanftp.sh) can divided to 3 parts. In first part, the required credentials and environment variables are defined. On second part, rmanfind.sql is called. On last part, the resultset is processed and files are uploaded via FTP:

#!/bin/bash

#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# rmanftp (C) 2013 Gokhan Atil http://www.gokhanatil.com
#---------------------------------------------------------------------

# Required Info to Connect Oracle
. oraenv <<EOF
ORCL
EOF
ORACLE_CREDENTIALS=gokhan/atil

# Required Info to Connect FTP Server
TARGETSERVER=192.168.0.10
FTPUSER=oracle
FTPPASS=oracle
TARGETDIR=DAILY_BACKUP

# Query Latest Backup
SENDFILES=(`$ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus -s $ORACLE_CREDENTIALS @rmanfind.sql`)

COUNT=${#SENDFILES[*]}
IDX=0
SENDTHEMALL=''

while (( $IDX < $COUNT ))
do
LOCALPATH=`echo ${SENDFILES[$IDX]} | sed 's|\(.*\)/.*|\1|'`
FILENAME=`echo ${SENDFILES[$IDX]} | sed 's|.*/\(.*\)|\1|'`
SENDTHEMALL="${SENDTHEMALL}lcd $LOCALPATH\n"
SENDTHEMALL="${SENDTHEMALL}put $FILENAME\n"
IDX=$(($IDX+1))
done

# Convert Newlines to Enters?
FTPCMD=`echo -e $SENDTHEMALL`

# Upload Files
ftp -d -n $TARGETSERVER <<EOF
user $FTPUSER $FTPPASS
cd $TARGETDIR
bin
$FTPCMD
bye
EOF

Here are the important parts of the script:

Line 20: The resultset returned from SQL Plus is put into an array variable. Be careful about the brackets.
Line 22: How many rows we have?
Line 26: A while loop starts here to processes all rows in the result set.
Line 30-31: I extract the path and file name because ftp client does not support full path names. So I create “cd” and “put” commands for each backup piece.
Line 36: SENDTHEMALL variable has newline (\n) characters but when I put it directly to EOF block, these newline characters are not honored, so I call “echo -e” and assign the result to FTPCMD variable.
Line 43: FTPCMD contains ftp commands such as “lcd XXXXX put YYYYY”.