---
title: Slow rman Backups? Check This Out
description: Slow Oracle 10.2.0.2 backups? Check out note 375386.1 on metalink. You have to force rman to use the RULE hint to make your rman backup run faster
---

[Blog | Pythian ](https://www.pythian.com/blog)

# [Slow rman Backups? Check This Out](https://www.pythian.com/blog/slow-rman-backups-check-this-out)

 Written by [Pythian Marketing](https://www.pythian.com/blog/author/pythian-marketing) | Jan 16, 2007 5:00:00 AM

## Notice

If you have found rman backups slow in Oracle 10.2.0.2, you should check out note 375386.1 on [metalink](https://metalink.oracle.com/). It seems the CBO isn’t all its made out to be, and you have to force rman to use the `RULE` hint instead to make your rman backup run faster. (And you thought `RULE` was deprecated, didn’t you!)

## A few interesting things come out of that Oracle note.

1. Tracing an rman session: connect to rman and set a 10046 event:
   
   ```
   rman target / log rman.log trace rman.trc debug
   RMAN> sql "alter session set events ' '10046 trace name context forever, level
   12' '"
   ```
   
   Note the two single quotes before *10046* and two single quotes and a double quote after *level 12*
2. Setting rman to use the `RULE` hint instead of CBO: add the following to your rman script:
   
   ```
   sql "alter session set optimizer_mode=RULE";
   ```
3. In spite of what Oracle says, there really is no end of the road for the `RULE` hint just yet.

The underlying bug# is 5247609 if you’re interested.

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