Error “Activation: 15005 - OCIStmtExecute failed with ORA-1950” and “program 'sp_tconf' was not found" (4302000)

Activation failed with following errors showing up in event log:

Error    2015-01-12 14:57:33.876137 2471 3074259104 Activation: 15005 - OCIStmtExecute failed with ORA-1950.  (activating sid sourceSID) [module osp]

Error    2015-01-12 14:57:33.885221 6376 3242847968 Activation failed: program 'sp_tconf' was not found

The screen shot of the failed activation showed:

sp_ctrl (epswst3:2100)> activate config dbpt1_ccspat1_20150112_2.cfg

   program 'sp_tconf' was not found

The binary sp_tconf was present in the bin directory and had the correct ownership/permissions.

The privileges of Shareplex users have been changed so activation process cannot function normally where it needs to allocate extents to tablespaces as needed during activation process. To correct this:

1. Shutdown Shareplex
2. Re-run ora_setup while ensuring that the Shareplex user is not changed otherwise it can result in the loss of active config, if any.
3. Restart Shareplex and activate again.

The ora_setup grants the necessary privileges/roles to Shareplex user which are needed by it during running of Shareplex. These privileges should not be revoked or tempered with as it can result in unintended consequences. In our case it only prevented from activating a new config file and the prevailing config file was still active and the replication was otherwise functioning fine.

Though the activation also complained about “program 'sp_tconf' was not found”, the binary sp_tconf was present in the bin directory and had the correct ownership/permissions. So this error was not relevant to the issue and was a misnomer.