How to Resolve ORA-00265: instance recovery required, cannot set ARCHIVELOG mode

ORA-00265

I bet your database is 8i or 9i and you were trying to startup the database along with a set of procedure in a shell script. And maybe, you just shutdown abort your database and left the database in a temporary inconsistent situation (rollback needed).

ORA-00265: instance recovery required, cannot set ARCHIVELOG mode

If you're in such case, then you can continue reading this post.

I think this message only notified that you can't enable archivelog mode at this moment (mount state) because some transactions required rollbacks at open state.

Let's see the content of ORA-00265 to clarify some thoughts.

Description

ORA-00265: instance recovery required, cannot set ARCHIVELOG mode

Cause

The database either crashed or was shutdown with the ABORT option. Media recovery cannot be enabled because the online logs may not be sufficient to recover the current datafiles.

Action

Open the database and then enter the SHUTDOWN command with the NORMAL or IMMEDIATE option.

Solution

Please do a manual startup to open, the database will rollback uncommitted transactions automatically. After the database is open, you can shutdown the database and startup to mount so as to enable archivelog mode.