RMAN connect to Auxiliary Fails With ORA-01031: INSUFFICIENT PRIVILEGES

If you are getting this error when you are trying to connect like this

$ rman auxiliary /

then it may be because your OS user is not added to either DBA or OINSTALL system groups. This is easy to resolve. But if you are getting this error while doing the below

$ rman auxiliary sys/oracle@AUX1

and you know that you have configured everything like Listener and TNSNAMES etc then the resolution is a bit tricky. The auxiliary database is mostly used when you are duplicating a database or something. There are situations where you must connect to your auxiliary database using service name like when you are duplicating from active database without any backup.

In these situations you can't change your password file using SQL*PLUS because database will be in no-mount state. Here is the two step solution.

1. Copy your target database's password file and rename it so that the instance names are replaced.
2. Make sure that instance and service names are same in the following locations and files. They must be same and at the same time all of them must be in UPPER case

Here are the locations where you need to verify and check the instance and service names.

• The db_name parameter in parameter file (init.ora)
• Instance name in Password file's name
• SID_NAME in Sid description section of Listener.ora
• Service name in tnsnames.ora entry

$ rman auxiliary sys/oracle@AUX1 

will work now.