Physical standby on 9.2 failover fails

Question

Hello,
I have setup physical standby database and it seems to be transferring data correctly. I tested it also be going into read only mode and querying for changes.
My problem is attempting to do a failover. I simply disconnect the primary to simulate the outtage and attempt to bring secondary by doing the following. Note that I tried both commit to switchover and activate standby.
SQL> ALTER DATABASE RECOVER MANAGED STANDBY DATABASE FINISH;
Database altered.
SQL> ALTER DATABASE ACTIVATE STANDBY DATABASE;
ALTER DATABASE ACTIVATE STANDBY DATABASE
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00261: log 4 of thread 1 is being archived or modified
ORA-00312: online log 4 thread 1: '/u02/oradata/digidsgn/stdby_redo04a.log'
ORA-00312: online log 4 thread 1: '/u03/oradata/digidsgn/stdby_redo04b.log'
SQL> ALTER DATABASE COMMIT TO SWITCHOVER TO PRIMARY
2 ;
ALTER DATABASE COMMIT TO SWITCHOVER TO PRIMARY
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-16139: media recovery required
The log transfer method is by LGWR...
LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_2='SERVICE=DIGIDSGN.STBY LGWR ASYNC NOAFFIRM'
Primary database is in MAXIMIZE PERFORMANCE mode.
What am I doing wrong? I do have standby logs created, on standby the names are different from the primary ones.
Another question:
Is the switchover/failover operation suppose to create a normal control file and normal redo logs automatically?
thanks.

Answer 1

Well, this is gonna sound crazy, but I did a fair amount of digging and realized that I couldn't re-select my system disk as my startup disk as well (Error message said "Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed"). I was thinking the installer was trying to modify some settings on my boot volume and couldn't figure out what volume my boot volume really was.
I thought this issue and the update installer issue was related based on something in the iTunes error log looking for "Volumes/Boot OS X".
I figured if I could fix the Startup Disk issue, the other issue would be fixed as well. So I decided to poke around and figure out why I couldn't select my boot volume in the Startup Disk Preference Pane and found these instructions:
Create a new files in Terminal using this command:
*sudo nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist*
In that file, inserted the default code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://
www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>
Once that file was created with the proper contents, I went back to the Startup Disk Preference Pane and could select my system disk.
At that point I attempted to install the Trackpad/Magic Trackpad Updater... and it worked! HA! Then I tried iTunes... and success was found there as well.
Hope you have the same luck that I did...
Cheers,
Sapridyne