ora-12500 on db startup

[Ed.St...@nmm.nissan-usa.com]

We are running OWS 7.3 on two NT 3.51 servers – one test and one prod. The
test server is running 18 different databases and the prod server has 7. We
have the servers re-booted every weekend, and to make this process more idiot
proof, I wrote database startup and shutdown procedures in Rexx. Cutting the
startup procedure to its basics, and using a pseudo-code, it looks something
like this:

/* ----- begin pseudo code ----

Sid_list. = GetSidList()
/* the above statement calls a user written function that will read and parse
the
/* LISTENER.ORA file and return a list of sids discovered there. SID_LIST.0
will
/* be the count of entries found; SID_LIST.1 thru SID_LIST.n will be the names
of
/* the sids.

Do x = 1 by 1 until x > sid_list.0 /* for every sid found in LISTENER.ORA */
Sql_script = MakeScript(sid_list.x) /* create a script to start the
database and return its name */ Os_cmd = ‘svrmgr23 @sql_script’ /* have
SVRMGR execute the startup script */ End

/* ----- end pseudo code ---- */

For a typical sid, the generated SQL_SCRIPT.SQL file looks like this:

spool StartLCOP.log
connect internal/****@LCOPdb
startup pfile=d:\orant\database\LCOP\initLCOP.ora
exit

Originally, the OS_CMD was “start svrmg23 . . . .” so that all db’s could be
started in parallel, but I ran into a bunch of ORA-12500 errors, so I removed
the START to see what would happen by single threading it all. On this
weekend’s reboot, I still got one db that returned the following msgs:

ORA-12500: TNS:listener failed to start a dedicated server process
LCC-00161: ORACLE error (possible syntax error) parameter [NULL]
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges

Given that the startup cmds and the method of invoking them is absolutely
consistent for all sids, what should I be looking for as the cause of the
failure? There is nothing wrong with the DB itself, as I am able to start it
by hand from an OS prompt after the script has completed.

Ideas?

--
Ed Stevens
Nissan Motor Mfg. Corp., USA

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[Sybrand Bakker]

Hi Ed,

I don't want to be impolite, however, why on earth do you have that large number
of databases on 1!! server. My experience with NT is that in 256 Mb memory 2
databases will run more or less, let alone it will work with 18.
Anyway, that's not the problem here. First of all: if the server shuts and Oracle
has been installed normally it has been configured so all databases startup
automatically at reboot.
If you want to do it manually you need to use the oradim73 utility with the
startup clause: startup=srvc,inst and pfile=c:\orant\database\init<sid>.ora.
Server Manager won't work as the background threads have not been started yet.
You will need to start the listener beforehand by issuing the command line
net start OracleTnsListener.
That should be everything.

Hope this helps,

Sybrand Bakker, Oracle DBA