Post Power Trip Problem - Cannot access Oracle.

[Guest_imported]

Machine: Intel Dual P 200MHz, 256Mb RAM, 4Gb HDD
System: WinNT4, Oracle Server 8.1.5

Hello all,

We have a problem accessing our Oracle Database after a power trip. Logon through SQL-Plus gives the following error:
ORA-01034: ORACLE not available

Attempt to start the database from svrmgrl gives these errors:
--------------------------------
c:\>svrmgrl
SVRMGRL>connect internal
password:
Connected.
SVRMGRL>shutdown abort;
Oracle instance shut down.
SVRMGRL>startup;
ORA-27100: shared memory realm already exists
OSD-00000: Message 0 not found; product=RDBMS; facility=SOSD
SVRMGRL>
-------------------------------

According to the Online Resource, it looks like the previous instance is not shutdown properly. We try stopping the service and starting it again but it does not help. Rebooting the machine won't help either.

What should we do ? Please Help.

 

[karluk]

I'm very sorry that you have been unable to resolved this issue. You're right, the documentation says that this error indicates a failure to shutdown the instance properly.

Have you contacted Oracle support? What do they say? Usually they take "down database" errors very seriously.

Are you sure that you're starting up the instance properly? I don't know how your system is configured, but I find it rather suspicious that you don't use a "pfile={filename}" parameter on your startup command. Maybe you are trying to start up a different instance than you expect.

 

[karluk]

I have similar concerns about your "connect internal" command. I see that you aren't using the "connect internal@sid" syntax. Do you know for sure which instance you are connected to?

Have you checked your alert log? What does it say?

 

[carp]

I found this on Metalink; perhaps it will help:

Trying to startup or shutdown the database in server manager gives the error:

ORA-27100 shared memory realm already exists


Solution Description
--------------------
The reason for this is that the startup of the instance failed due to
lack of resources, most likely memory.

1. Stop the service OracleServiceSID
2. Find out if there is a resource problem on the machine, and
check the init.ora parameter DB_BLOCK_BUFFERS
They may be set too high for the hardware resources available.
3. Start the service Oracle ServiceSID

The service should start and the database should be available.


Explanation
-----------
When the service is started, a lock is acquired on shared memory segments to
avoid other processes to attach to it. Although the service did start, the
database did not start, and so left the lock open. The only way to get rid
of it, is to shut down the service.

The reason the database did not start, can be because of too high values
for DB_BLOCK_BUFFERS in the init.ora file when you use default database in the
Oracle Database Assistant.

Workaround is to use custom values for database creation, or to create the
scripts and edit them before they're run.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks everyone. You are right. Init.ora is the culprit.
Thanks.