ORA-00445: background process "SNP0" did not start after 120 seconds

[Diwakar_2]

When all users where connected to database and suddenly the user got error ora-472 and the i had gone to alert log file and i see following error.
Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 31257
Current log# 3 seq# 31257 mem# 0: C:\ORACLE\ORADATA\AMS10\REDO03.LOG
Tue Sep 24 11:22:32 2002
Restarting dead background process SNP0
Tue Sep 24 11:24:37 2002
Errors in file C:\Oracle\admin\ams10\bdump\ams10PMON.TRC:
ORA-00445: background process "SNP0" did not start after 120 seconds

Tue Sep 24 11:26:30 2002
LGWR: terminating instance due to error 472
Instance terminated by LGWR, pid = 1776
Dump file C:\Oracle\admin\ams10\bdump\ams10ALRT.LOG
Tue Sep 24 11:29:03 2002

and i have one more problem is
that the database generates an trace file which say as follows
-------
Dump file
*** SESSION ID:(39.715) 2002-07-19 21:27:52.109
Unable to read rdbms_server_dn from init.ora.
Dump file
Can anybody tell me what is the problem
I am using os as Server 2000.

Thanks in advance

[Barbara Spadaro_1]

Hi,

What version of Oracle are you using?
Found this on Metalink that might be useful:
According to bug 1393786, this is an authentication issue. The problem happens when NTS user authentication fails causing the database to try
and authenticate globally. This can happen when using the wrong username/password or when the init.ora is not configured with
os_authent_prefix = "". Make sure the init.ora to has the parameter os_authent_prefix = "" and that the login is correct. For more on the
os_authent_prefix parameter you can refer to the Oracle8i "Reference" Release 2 (8.1.6) This issue is said to be fixed with the release of 9i.

cheers
Barbar

[Barbara Spadaro_1]

Oh, and another thing, you might want to check your $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/sqlnet.ora file and if the sqlnet.authentication_service=(NTS) parameter is not being used, try commenting this out to see if this resolves the problem.

good luck
Barbara