I have very little experience with Oracle. We are a SQL Server shop with one legacy Oracle 11.2 database that serves an obscure but critical function. As part of our testing routine, this database needs to be copied from our production instance into several test instances. We do this by duplicating the test database using RMAN, from backup.

I just follow a series of steps left to us by the previous (Oracle) DBA when he left.

shutdown <testdb>
startup nomount

rman auxiliary /

connect target <testdb>

I then run an RMAN script that looks like this (I have to set the database names, until time, logfile locations:

run{
ALLOCATE AUXILIARY CHANNEL newdb DEVICE TYPE disk;
DUPLICATE TARGET DATABASE TO <test db>
DB_FILE_NAME_CONVERT ('<prod db>','<test db>')
UNTIL TIME "TO_DATE('2016-05-05 07:30:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS')"
LOGFILE
GROUP 1 ('D:\oralogs\<testdb>\redo01.log') SIZE 100M REUSE,
GROUP 2 ('D:\Oralogs\<testdb>\redo02.log') SIZE 100M REUSE,
GROUP 3 ('D:\oralogs\<testdb>\redo03.log') SIZE 100M REUSE,
GROUP 4 ('D:\oralogs\<testdb>\redo04.log') SIZE 100M REUSE,
GROUP 5 ('D:\oralogs\<testdb>\redo05.log') SIZE 100M REUSE
BACKUP LOCATION '\\backup network location';
}

At this point I get an error that I cannot figure out.

RMAN-05502: the target database must be mounted when issuing a DUPLICATE command

I have searched online for hours - this error points to the target database not being mounted. However, I am duplicating from backup. I've been through the online RMAN documentation pretty carefully, and I cannot see why this is failing.

My colleague usually performs this procedure, so as far as I know this usually works. However she is quite ill right now.