ORA-39166: Object SYS.AUD$ was not found

ORA-39166: Object SYS.AUD$ was not found

When trying to backup the SYS.AUD$ table using datapump for my oracle 11g database, this is what i'm getting below

[oracle@oracle ~]$ expdp directory=EXPDR dumpfile=SYS_AUD_table.dmp logfile=exp_SYS_AUD_table.log tables=AUD$ exclude=statistics

Export: Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production on Fri Nov 16 15:31:15 2018

Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Username: / as sysdba

Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - 64bit Production

With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

Starting "SYSTEM"."SYS_EXPORT_TABLE_01":  /******** AS SYSDBA directory=EXPDR dumpfile=SYS_AUD_table.dmp logfile=exp_SYS_AUD_table.log tables=AUD$ exclude=statistics

Estimate in progress using BLOCKS method...

Total estimation using BLOCKS method: 0 KB

ORA-39166: Object SYS.AUD$ was not found.

ORA-31655: no data or metadata objects selected for job

Job "SYS"."SYS_EXPORT_TABLE_01" completed with 2 error(s) at 15:31:18

Cause:

According to Oracle there is a restriction on dataPump export. It cannot export schemas like SYS, ORDSYS, EXFSYS, MDSYS, DMSYS, CTXSYS, ORDPLUGINS, LBACSYS, XDB, SI_INFORMTN_SCHEMA, DIP, DBSNMP and WMSYS in any mode.

Solution:

Export the table SYS.AUD$ using the traditional export:

[oracle@oracle ~]$ exp file=SYS_AUD_table.dmp log=exp_SYS_AUD_table.log tables=AUD$ statistics=none

Export: Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production on Fri Nov 16 16:24:40 2018

Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Username: / as sysdba

Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - 64bit Production

With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

Export done in US7ASCII character set and AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set

server uses WE8ISO8859P15 character set (possible charset conversion)

About to export specified tables via Conventional Path ...

. . exporting table                           AUD$  3123792 rows exported

Export terminated successfully without warnings.