Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA)

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Overview

The RDA is a group of command line diagnostic tools that Oracle made in Perl. RDA is used to find out a lot of information about an Oracle system. The collected data can be used to find out what’s wrong and see how the system is set up as a whole.

There is a group of HTML files called “output” in the RDA output location that you choose during setup. In the location __start.htm, you can look at the information that was gathered. A.zip file is also used to store the end result.

It’s not possible to say how long RDA will take to run. It depends on a lot of things, like how busy the system is, the choices made, the network settings, and so on. It doesn’t take long for RDA to run on a normal machine. A lot of scripts are set to stop after 30 seconds if they can’t finish or run. For example, the lsnrctl status command will stop if the user is stuck. On a very busy system, RDA can take 15 minutes or more, especially if there are a lot of Oracle listener processes running at the same time.

To Download RDA see: Doc ID 314422.1

Installation

su - oracle
 1. Download the RDA from Oracle to: /u01/orasw.
 2. unzip p21769913_20120121_Linux-x86-64.zip
    An rda sub directory will be corrected.
  • Change p21769913_20120121_Linux-x86-64.zip with the file you download.
  • If RAC node su – grid instead of oracle account.

RDA Quick Reference

  1. Verify the RDA Installation
    su – oracle
    cd /u01/orasw/rda
    rda.sh -cv
  2. Run Configuration
    This will present a series of prompts used to create configuration file (setup.cfg) for running RDA. In most cases the default values should be used.
    rda.sh -S
  3. Run RDA
    rda.sh -v
    This is the standard command to run RDA process that generates HTML report files.
    The above creates file: RDA_output_<HOSTNAME>.zip

If RAC node su – grid instead of oracle account.

setup.cfg – SQL_LOGIN

Example entries

SQL_LOGIN='/'
SQL_LOGIN='scott'

setup.cfg

Connect as sysdba Flag
SQL_SYSDBA=n [1=yes,0=no]

Comments

  • As a means of providing higher security when using RDA, passwords are no longer stored in plain text in the setup.txt file. As result, RDA prompts for the required passwords when collecting the data.
  • If the Perl implementation installed on your operating system supports it, RDA will suppress the character echo during password requests. When the character echo is suppressed, the password is requested twice for verification. If both entered passwords do not match after three attempts, the request is cancelled.
  • RDA can perform OS authentication, which eliminates having to enter a password for database information gathering. It also accepts “/” as a username to avoid entering a password when RDA is gathering database information.

    For executing RDA at regularly scheduled intervals via cron, passwords can be encoded inside the setup file. For instance, to encode the system password, use the following command: rda.cmd -A system

    The password will be requested interactively.

RDA Quick Reference: Windows

RDA Commands To Use

  • rda.cmd – Use this command if Perl is not available. The rda.cmd used is used in these examples.
  • rda.pl – Use this command if Perl is installed and available in the path (to verify: perl -V).
  1. Verify the RDA Installation
    rda.cmd -cv
  2. Run Configuration
    This will present a series of prompts used to create configuration file (setup.cfg) for running RDA. In most cases the default values should be used.
    rda.cmd -S
  3. Run RDA
    rda.cmd -v
    This is the standard command to run RDA process that generates HTML report files.

setup.cfg – SQL_LOGIN

Example entries

SQL_LOGIN='/'
SQL_LOGIN='scott'

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