When you enable autobackup of the control file, RMAN creates the backup of the control file in one of the following locations:
- Default location
- FRA
- Location specified via the CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT command
If you aren’t using an FRA, or if you haven’t specified a location for the control file autobackups, the control file autobackup is written to an OS-dependent default location. In Linux/Unix environments the default location is ORACLE_HOME/dbs; for example,
/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0.1/db_1/dbs/c-3423216220-20130109-01
If you’ve enabled an FRA, then RMAN automatically writes the control file autobackup files to directories in the FRA, using an OMF format for the name; for example,
/<fra>/<dbuname>/autobackup/<YYYY_MM_DD>/o1_mf_s_729103049_68fho9z2_.bkp
I don’t usually use the default location or the FRA for control file autobackups. I prefer these backups to be placed in the same directory the database backups are in. Here is an example:
RMAN> configure controlfile autobackup format for device type disk to
'/u01/ORA12C/rman/rman_ctl_%F.bk';
If you want to set the autobackup format back to the default, do so as follows:
RMAN> configure controlfile autobackup format for device type disk clear;