Connecting to RMAN 8i

There are two ways which I know of to connect to RMAN 8i. The first one uses password file authentication and the second one using o/s authentication:

Method 1:

/ora/ora8i$ export ORACLE_SID=my_db
/ora/ora8i$ rman catalog rman/rman@my_rman_db

Recovery Manager: Release 8.1.7.4.0 - Production

RMAN-06008: connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN# connect target
RMAN-06005: connected to target database: my_db (DBID=3393849776)

RMAN]

Method 2:

/ora/ora8i$ export ORACLE_SID=my_rman_db
/ora/ora8i$ rman target system/password@my_db catalog rman/rman

Recovery Manager: Release 8.1.7.4.0 - Production

RMAN-06005: connected to target database: my_db (DBID=452115294)
RMAN-06008: connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN]

Note that in method 1, RMAN tries to connect as sysdba to the target database, so make sure the user (in this case, SYSTEM), has sysdba privileges.