I have a dmp file, which was exported on a Linux machine. I want to import this file to a WindowsXP machine. While submitting the command imp 
user/username@conn.string file=filename
at the command promt, it throws the error "not a valid file, header failed verification." What could be wrong?

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Typically, this happens when you transfer the dump file from one server to another using an ASCII file transfer mechanism. For example, when you use FTP to transfer the file, many FTP utilities will incorrectly assume that the file is a text file and transfer in ASCII mode. The dump file is a binary file. You should explicitly tell your FTP utility that the file is a binary file. The following example shows how to do just that:

  1. ftp (invoke the 'ftp' command line utility)
  2. open unix_server.acme.com
  3. Sign on with username and password.
  4. bin (this ftp command will force the transfer to be in binary mode)
  5. get exp.dmp
  6. quit
If this does not fix your problem, then the export dump file has become corrupt for some reason. Simply perform another export, transfer in binary mode, and you should be able to import without problems.

This was first published in June 2005

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