ORA-38706: Cannot turn on FLASHBACK DATABASE logging. ORA-38707: Media recovery is not enabled.

I was trying to turn on flashback for the oracle database and it was failed with below error 

 

SQL> alter database flashback on;

alter database flashback on

*

ERROR at line 1:

ORA-38706: Cannot turn on FLASHBACK DATABASE logging.

ORA-38707: Media recovery is not enabled.

 

On further checking I found, database was in noarchivelog mode, this is how we can check archive log mode.

 

SQL> archive log list

Database log mode              No Archive Mode

Automatic archival             Disabled

Archive destination            C:\Downloads\arch

Oldest online log sequence     137

Current log sequence           139

SQL>

 

In order to bring it in archive log mode, I followed steps mentioned here convert database to archive log mode  , once your database is in archive log mode , you can simple turn on flashback without any issues.

Follow below commands to turn on flashback for the database.

 

SQL> archive log list

Database log mode              No Archive Mode

Automatic archival             Disabled

Archive destination            C:\Downloads\arch

Oldest online log sequence     137

Current log sequence           139

SQL>

 

SQL> alter database flashback on;

 

Database altered.

 

SQL> select database_name, flashback_on from v$database;

 

DATABASE_NAME        FLASHBACK_ON

-------------------- ------------------

TECHNODB             YES