Location of diagnostic directories in 11g
Posted by John Hallas on April 3, 2009
Since the advent of 11g and the use of diagnostic_dest there is no requirement to create the bdump/cdump/udump and other directories required for oracle trace and admin files. Well, that is true if you are happy to accept the default location under $ORACLE_BASE. However the path to the trace area where alert logs and dump files are kept is a long one and I prefer to use an alias to get there.
In the .profile I set up two aliases to point to the trace areas for ASM and whichever database my current SID is set to
alias diagdest=’cd $ORACLE_BASE/`adrci exec=”show homes” | grep $ORACLE_SID`/trace’
alias diagdestasm=’cd $ORACLE_BASE/`adrci exec=”show homes” | grep ASM`/trace’
I am sure there are other ways of setting a similar alias and I am happy to hear of any that others use
Oracle DBA - A lifelong learning experience 
Vikas Bagga said
Hello
I have read with great interest your blog on ASM.
I recently migrated a production database running on raw devices (for testing ASM storage)using RMAN methodology. All is fine.
My question now is I want to rename my PROD database to TEST and also change the ASM structure to be pointing to TEST. Thus I am looking to rename all my datafiles (150+).
I have researched and there are 2 methods using rman copy/switch/sql alter/recover (sounds very long and has too many steps) second is using aliases.
Can you suggest something fast and efficient and least error prone?
John said
I managed to get one alias set as ” alias ddest=’cd $ORACLE_HOME/../../diag/rdbms/$lcsid/$ORACLE_SID/trace'”