How to upgrade the RMAN recovery catalog to 12c?

Some days back I faced an issue while trying to upgrade the RMAN recovery catalog to support 12c databases.

RMAN> upgrade catalog;

RMAN-00571: ===========================================================

RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============

RMAN-00571: ===========================================================

RMAN-07539: insufficient privileges to create or upgrade the catalog schema

The problem is that for 12c the catalog owner requires additional privileges. The solution is to run the dbmsrmansys.sql script that comes with the 12c binaries.

You have to copy this file from your 12c home “$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin” directory to where your RMAN recovery catalog database is and execute it.

SQL> @$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/dbmsrmansys.sql

The script is going to complain for the lack of 2 other scripts, but the upgrade runs just fine.

$ rman CATALOG rman@catalog

recovery catalog database Password:

RMAN> UPGRADE CATALOG;

RMAN> UPGRADE CATALOG;

RMAN> EXIT;

Thanks,

Alfredo