Ryan, The ORA-1034 error means one of two things: 1.) The instance you're trying to connect to isn't up, so there's no shared memory segment to attach to. 2.) The instance is up and running, but from the environment you're trying to connect from, either the ORACLE_HOME or ORACLE_SID is not set correctly. When you set ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID and startup an instance, Oracle uses a proprietary algorithm that combines the ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID to come up with a shared memory key, which is used at shared memory segment creation time, i.e., when the SGA is allocated. After that, further bequeath connections must have the same ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID defined, so that they can define the same key value, and use it to attach to that existing SGA. If the ORACLE_HOME and/or ORACLE_SID is set incorrectly, the key value will be calculated incorrectly, and the server process will not be able to attach to the SGA shared memory segments. Ok, there's a third thing.....if you're sure the above two items are not the issue, you could be running into a bug.... -Mark -- Mark J. Bobak Senior Database Administrator, System & Product Technologies ProQuest 789 E. Eisenhower, Parkway, P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 +1.734.997.4059 or +1.800.521.0600 x 4059 mark.bobak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.proquest.com www.csa.com ProQuest...Start here. -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ryan_gaffuri@xxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 11:01 AM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: fixing a bad oracle install We were hitting shared memory errors. Googled it and this is common when an Oracle install is wrong. I looked into it and the kernel parameters were never set(I didnt do the install). This is in Redhat 5.0 with Oracle 10.2.0.1. Set the kernetl parameters and stepped through the install to make sure ulimit, etc... was correct. Started up the DB and got the same error. ORA-01034: ORACLE not available ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist Linux-x86_64 Error: 2: No such file or directory So I shut the DB down. did an export for a quick backup(its just development data). Uninstaled the software and then reinstalled. started up the DB and had the same problem. I had to make a new database and import the data to it to start over. I am ok for now, but for future reference, is any DB created with a bad install hosed and I have to make a new DB? The new DB works fine so far with the imported data. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l