Getting this error in oracle ORA-01031 insufficient privilages

[spex]

When you run 'sqlplus' from the OS, the communication pathway is established with interprocess communication. In other words, you bypass 'tnsnames.ora', and as long as your user is a member of the dba group, you will be able to connect as sysdba. In order to test changes to your Oracle listener config, you need to connect from a client workstation, or run 'tnsping ' from the server or a client.

If your Oracle instance isn't running, you must start there. First determine what caused the instance to go down, then get it running again. Once it's running, then you can make changes to 'tnsnames.ora', if you need to. Please post the output of 'ps -ef |grep pmon'.

Consult alertlog:

$ORACLE_BASE/admin//bdump/alert_.log

You might also want to have a look at listener.log:

$ORACLE_HOME/network/log/listener.log

You should also check for hardware errors in syslog:

/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

[TwoProc]

Make sure you belong to the group indicated in the file $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib/config.c. If your user not in the dba group (/etc/groups) indicated in this file, you'll have exactly the problem you're seeing. Also run the unix command "groups" to see what groups you belong to.

[Joseph C. Denman]

Check to make sure the Database was not started by someone other than oracle.

ps -ef | grep lgwr

I had a similar problam once and one of the DBA's had started the instance as a different user.

...jcd...

[Patti Johnson]

Do you have a TWO_TASK environment variable set to a remote database?

ORACLE_SID should be set to the SID you are trying to start - and TWO_TASK should not be set.

Patti