Activation, Capture or ora_setup fails with ORA-01034 Oracle not available (4300168)

Activation, Capture or ora_setup fails with ORA-01034 Oracle not available

You see the messages similar to the following showing up in event log while activating a config and it fails:

11/19/03 23:00 Process launched: sp_tconf (for o.SID queue *) [pid = 7426]
11/19/03 23:00 Notice: sp_tconf(pdb) (for o.SID queue *) Oracle env - <path>

11/19/03 23:00 Bad config file: file - unknown; Oracle Error: connect failed for database o.SID - ORA-01034: ORACLE not available.
11/19/03 23:00 Process exited sp_tconf (for o.SID queue *) [pid = 7426] - exit(1)

After entering the password for the SYSTEM password during "ora_setup", get the following error:

Error! Unable to login using the user name and password just entered.
ORA-01034: ORACLE not available

Other Shareplex processes may also complain about ORA-01034, notably activation, ora_setup and sp_opst.

The error can be due to a number of reasons. Here is a checklist that one can look into to see if this is the cause before contacting Support:

1. oratab file: Should have correct SID and ORACLE_HOME entries and the correct case (upper or lower)

2. config file: Should have the right SID entry for source

3. environment settings:The environment for Shareplex should have the right values for SID and ORACLE_HOME

4. setuid on the oracle binary in $ORACLE_HOME/bin should be set so that if you start it while you are logged on as Oracle, it still runs as root. If the Oracle sticky bit was changed, it will not allow a local connection to the database for non-Oracle users.

The permissions for the Oracle executable should look as follows:

-rwsr-s--x 1 oracle dba 34049220 Nov 29 2001 oracle

5. setuid on for the filer mount where oracle runs from (%ORACLE_HOME/bin) should be enabled. If it is disabled then ora_setup will not work even if setuid is enabled for the oracle binary. <See oracle doc Note:1056155.6 for more information>

To check the permissions of the directory upon which Oracle software is installed. To do this type in:

% mount

A sample output is as follows:

/tmp on swap read/write on Tue Jul 7 18:26:43 1998
/u01 on /dev/dsk/c0t8d0s2 setuid/read/write on Tue Jul 7 18:26:43 1998
/u02 on /dev/dsk/c0t5d0s2 setuid/read/write on Tue Jul 7 18:26:43 1998

If the directory is not mounted with setuid it will look like this:

/u01 on /dev/dsk/c0t8d0s2 nosuid/read/write on Tue Jul 7 18:26:43 1998

If the directory is mounted with NOSUID, then have the system administrator remount the file system with suid enabled.