ORA-01034: ORACLE NOT AVAILABLE

[mshetty]

Hi,

Our new database is behaving a little strange. Both our
Oracle Server and Client are on the same machine but while
connecting through the Client I need to specify
"username@database_name". The same does not happen when I
run sqlplus, "sqlplus scott/tiger" works. The error message thrown when
I use only "username" is

ORA-01034: ORACLE NOT AVAILABLE

The variable ORACLE_SID is appropriately set, it's pointing
to the new database name. The new database is mounted and
the listener services are up.

Someone kind of hinted that the database is created as a
remote
database. Can I check what it currently is ... I mean a
default one /
remote.

We didn't face this problem with the old database. On
comparing the init.ora files we found that the new
database did not have the db_domain name set. We tried
setting this in the init file (was done after the database
was created).

Would help if I got some hint on where and what to look for.

Thanks and Regards,
M Shetty

[stecal]

ORA-01034 ORACLE not available

Cause: Oracle was not started. Possible causes include the following:

The SGA requires more space than was allocated for it.
The operating-system variable pointing to the instance is improperly defined.

Action: Refer to accompanying messages for possible causes and correct the problem mentioned in the other messages. If Oracle has been initialized, then on some operating systems, verify that Oracle was linked correctly. See the platform-specific Oracle documentation.

[mshetty]

Hi,

I was able to sort out the problem to an extent. I am not sure if the
solution is right. I am working on HP-UX 11.0. We have 2 users one is 'oracle8i' and the
other is 'user1'. The 'oracle8i' user belongs to a group - 'dba' on unix and 'user1' belongs
to someother group. We were not able to execute sqlplus from 'user1' even after setting
ORACLE_BASE, ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_SID and PATH to point to ORACLE_HOME/bin.

The moment sqlplus was executed from 'user1' login it would say

ORA 01034: Oracle not available

whereas the same thing works with 'oracle8i' login. 'oracle8i' is the
unix login from which oracle was installed.

The problem was sorted out by adding the 'user1' to the 'dba'
group. Does oracle have a list of authenticated users??. The same thing is not required
on Sun Solaris. On Solaris 'user1' still belongs to a different unix group.

Would help if I could get some comments on the above.

Thanks and Regards,
M Shetty

[stecal]

Originally posted by mshetty
Hi,
We were not able to execute sqlplus from 'user1' even after setting ORACLE_BASE, ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_SID and PATH to point to ORACLE_HOME/bin.

Please clarify - you have all four variables pointing to the same place?

Under OFA (Optimal Flexible Architecture), this is how you build the path and variables:
ORACLE_BASE = /mount_point/app/oracle/product
ORACLE_HOME = $ORACLE_BASE/version_number
ORACLE_PATH = $ORACLE_HOME/bin

ORACLE_SID refers to a name - the name of your database, not a directory or path.