Oracle – How to Mirror Copies of Redo Logs

The REDO logs should be copied.

Shutdown doesn't trigger a logfile switch.

If you are changing the paths for the files, then using the "create controlfile reuse noresetlogs" method is the best. If you do move it without REDO logs, then archivelog current and then use the "create controlfile set resetlogs" method. In general though, moving the redo logs are best.

--EDIT--

Based on what you said, you are mounting these in the exact same path, then do your self a favor and just put all of the files, DATAFILES TEMPFILES CONTROLFILES REDOLOGS, etc in the exact same file path. Nothing else to do and it comes up fine.

-Richard

Oracle itself will generally generate redo in the process of running various background jobs. For example, by default in 10g, there is a job that gathers statistics on objects. That will generate redo. By default, 10g has a job that gathers AWR information as well every hour. That will generate redo as well. There are a number of other background jobs (checkpointing, updating the SCN to timestamp mapping table, etc.) that are going to be running as well which will be generating redo on an ongoing basis just as a matter of course.

If you run the query

select current_scn, systimestamp 
  from v$database

in a (from a user standpoint) idle database, you'll note that the current_scn is incrementing every few seconds. That is Oracle doing various sorts of housekeeping. That housekeeping will generate a small amount of redo each time. Over the course of a full day, it's pretty common that this would add up to enough for a couple of archived logs even if your system is otherwise pretty idle.