Originally posted by hrishy
Well the only realy way to check wheather the database is up or not would be to from a shell script taht can actually login into the databse and do somethin like seelect sysdate from dual;
No need to know any username and or password, no need to actually log into the database to know if it is up and running. Simply try to connect to the database using any existent or non existent database account. If the connection is successfull you know the database is up and running. If you get ORA-1031 "Invalid username or password" you know the database is up and running. In any other case you know the database (or at least one of the needed system components, like listener) is not up and running.