Flash Recovery Area

There are situations that you're runing out of disk space in Flash Recovery Area (FRA).  You see a message like in the alert log like "Can not open flashback thread because there is no more space in flash recovery area".  There are couple solutions for this.

1)  Increase space size of alshback back area: 
     alter system set db_recovery_file_dest_size = x GB;

2)  Drop the restore point: 
     select name, storage_size from v$restore_point, drop restore point x;

3)  Disable flashback database: 
     Shutdown => startup mount => alter database flashback off

4)  Delete some old files like archived logs, unused backups
     RMAN => delete noprompt backup of database; delete nopromopt backup copy of database
     RMAN > report obsolete ==> delete obsolte ==>

Check space
SQL> select * from v$recovery_file_dest;
NAME
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPACE_LIMIT SPACE_USED SPACE_RECLAIMABLE NUMBER_OF_FILES
----------- ---------- ----------------- ---------------
+DG_DBA_DF501
 1.0737E+10   28311552            

You can send image copies of datafiles to the FRA.  All you have to do is to make sure that 1)  Flash recovery area is configured  2)  The RMAN script does not have any format command

RMAN> backup as copy database;
Starting backup at 10-MAY-11
using target database control file instead of recovery catalog
allocated channel: ORA_DISK_1
channel ORA_DISK_1: SID=153 instance=TRXQAC1 device type=DISK
allocated channel: ORA_DISK_2
channel ORA_DISK_2: SID=141 instance=TRXQAC1 device type=DISK
allocated channel: ORA_DISK_3
channel ORA_DISK_3: SID=32 instance=TRXQAC1 device type=DISK
allocated channel: ORA_DISK_4
channel ORA_DISK_4: SID=154 instance=TRXQAC1 device type=DISK
ignoring encryption for proxy or image copies
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting datafile copy
input datafile file number=00020 name=+DG_TRX_DD501/trxqac/datafile/trax_i.297.730471011
channel ORA_DISK_2: starting datafile copy
input datafile file number=00021 name=+DG_TRX_DD501/trxqac/datafile/trax_i.295.730471029
channel ORA_DISK_3: starting datafile copy
input datafile file number=00022 name=+DG_TRX_DD501/trxqac/datafile/trax_i.298.730471061
channel ORA_DISK_4: starting datafile copy
input datafile file number=00023 name=+DG_TRX_DD501/trxqac/datafile/trax_i.283.730471085