How to Enter Interactive Mode While a Data Pump Job is Running

Data pump has very neat feature called interactive-command mode, DBA can change the status or content of the export/import job while it is running. The operation that DBA usually do in the interactive-command mode is to stop the export/import job for allowing himself to fix the problems he met, after all problems are fixed or given up, he can make the decision to let the job to resume or actually be killed.

Two ways can enter the interactive-command mode of the export. Either way will prompt you "Export>" for interaction.

1. From an attached client, press Ctrl+C.
The terminal could be in the logging mode of a specific running job. Let's try the method to enter interactive-command mode:
[oracle@orcl datapump]$ expdp "/ as sysdba" DIRECTORY=DATA_PUMP_SHARED LOGFILE=DATA_PUMP_SHARED:ora_datapump-schemas-`date +%Y%m%d%H`.log PARFILE=expdp-schemas.par 2>&1 | tee -a ops_datapump-schemas-`date +%Y%m%d%H`.log
...
Job: SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_01
  Operation: EXPORT
  Mode: SCHEMA
  State: EXECUTING
  Bytes Processed: 0
  Current Parallelism: 4
  Job Error Count: 0
  Dump File: /dump/datapump/exp_schemas01.dmp
    bytes written: 4,096
  Dump File: /dump/datapump/exp_schemas%u.dmp

Worker 1 Status:
  State: EXECUTING
  Object Schema: POWERUSER
  Object Name: WORKER1_USERPERM
  Object Type: SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/TABLE_DATA
  Completed Objects: 2,960
  Worker Parallelism: 1
^C
Export> stop_job=immediate

To signal an interruption will not stop the running job, it just leave the logging mode and enter the interactive-command mode. You can enter CONTINUE_CLIENT under the prompt to get back to the logging mode.

2. From another terminal, use expdp with attaching the job name.
Let's demonstrate to reattach an existing export.
[oracle@orcl datapump]$ expdp "/ as sysdba" attach=SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_01
Export: Release 10.2.0.3.0 - 64bit Production on Sat, 01 Dec, 2012 20:39:52

Copyright (c) 2003, 2005, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to: Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.3.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Oracle Label Security, OLAP and Data Mining Scoring Engine options

Job: SYS_EXPORT_SCHEMA_01
  Owner: SYS
  Operation: EXPORT
  Creator Privs: TRUE
  GUID: B5718B7D01C057F2E04400237D45D33A
  Start Time: Sat, 01 Dec, 2012 19:26:23
  Mode: SCHEMA
  Instance: orcl
  Max Parallelism: 4
  EXPORT Job Parameters:
  Parameter Name      Parameter Value:
     CLIENT_COMMAND        "/******** AS SYSDBA" DIRECTORY=DATA_PUMP_SHARED LOGFILE=DATA_PUMP_SHARED:ora_datapump-schemas-2012120119.log PARFILE=expdp-schemas.par
     INCLUDE_METADATA      0
  State: EXECUTING
  Bytes Processed: 0
  Current Parallelism: 4
  Job Error Count: 0
  Dump File: /dump/datapump/exp_schemas01.dmp
    bytes written: 4,096
  Dump File: /dump/datapump/exp_schemas%u.dmp

Worker 1 Status:
  State: EXECUTING
  Object Schema: POWERUSER
  Object Name: WORKER1_USERPERM
  Object Type: SCHEMA_EXPORT/TABLE/TABLE_DATA
  Completed Objects: 2,960
  Worker Parallelism: 1

Export> stop_job=immediate
Are you sure you wish to stop this job ([yes]/no): yes
...
Here we take an action to stop the export immediately under the interactive-command mode.

Reattachable data pump makes the data migration more flexible to operate. It's very useful especially when you like to modify the job content or status.