ORA01033:Oracle initialization or shutdown in progress

[dragonn1te]

Hi,

I'm running Oracle 9.2 on my Windows XP Pro. I'm pretty new to Oracle so please bear with me if I'm asking stupid questions.

I trashed my previous running instance of Oracle and I didn't have a backup of it (stupid me).

Hence, I thought that if I kept a copy of the whole oracle directory (including oradata which should contain all my data), installed a new copy of Oracle 9.2 with the same SID, I should be able to override the new DB with my old DB and everything should work.

Now, I'm getting this error and I really want to recover my old data.

I read here that I should do a shutdown abort etc, but the problem is, I can't even login at this point in time so how do I do that ?

Any other ideas ? All help much appreciated !

 

[alexhu]

You say you can't login, so how are you getting the startup message ?

The normal way to startup / shutdown is to

sqlplus /nolog

SQL*Plus: Release 9.0.1.0.0 - Production on Fri Dec 12 09:15:51 2003

(c) Copyright 2001 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.

SQL> connect / as sysdba
Connected.
SQL> shutdown abort

This is normally done is a DOS box, but I'm not sure about XP (does it still have DOS?)

Alex

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
It has an CMD box - looks and feels like DOS, altho' it is really not 'classic' DOS..Just an incredible simulation ( like 'Beatlemania' - assuming you are old enough to remember that).

Your previous trashing probably left some files in such a state that Oracle thinks the instance is in transition..the reply from Alex shoud handle that..

 

[dragonn1te]

Thanks to both Alex and Turkbear for your replies.

Unfortunately, it didn't work, ie I'm still getting that error message.

So now I'm thinking, should I copy only all the DBF files from my trashed database over to this clean one ?

Or is there another way to somehow get my old data working ?

I'm getting desperate....

 

[alexhu]

Well you're still not telling us what the message is or when it occured and until you do we're stabbing in the dark !

Alex

 

[alexhu]

A further question - did you do the copy while the database was up or down ?

Alex

 

[acct98]

Make sure you are pointing to the drive where your database is located. I was having the same problem.

 

[dragonn1te]

The error message is still the same : ORA01033 after I copied all the files from the oradata directory from my trashed copy to the clean Oracle install.

Here's how I did it :
- Did the shutdown abort
- Set all oracle services to manual startup
- Rebooted my machine
- Logged in again, copied the oradata directory over
- Started up the oracle services again
- Started up Enterprise Manager, tried to access the database and got ORA01033 error
- Stopped all services
- Checked the D:\oracle\ora92\database\oradim.log, found that it kept complaining about credential retrieval failed.
- Copied the old pwdoradw.ora file into :\oracle\ora92\DATABASE
- Did the whole shutdown abort, reboot thingy
- Tried accessing it via Enterprise Manager and I got this error message now : ORA-01991: invalid password file 'd:\oracle\ora92\DATABASE\PWDoradw.ORA'

So, I stopped here. Any other ideas ?

Er, acct98, how do I verify that I'm pointing to the right location ? I think I am but I just want to make sure...

Thanks !

 

[karluk]

"Credential retrieval failed" sounds like an ORA-12638 error. Is that right? Metalink note 141283.1 suggests that this error can usually be fixed by editing the sqlnet.ora file in your {oracle home}\network\admin directory to include the parameter

sqlnet.authentication_services=(none)

Another alternative is to recreate the password file with the orapwd utility.

 

[dragonn1te]

I've just fixed it.

Editing the sqlnet.ora file didn't really work, regenerating the password file by using the orapwd utility at the command line did the trick.

I've got my old database up and running now !! Yeah !!

Thanks so much to all of you and your replies !

Now to back it up first before anything else happens....