One of our production users complained that he couldn't connect to the database. I looked into the listener.log and found the following. Environment: 10.2.0.2 single instance on solaris sparc 64, 5.8 30-MAY-2007 14:33:31 * (CONNECT_DATA=(SID=XYZ)(CID=(PROGRAM=)(HOST=__jdbc__)(USER=))) * (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=165.63.19.68)(PORT=56635)) * establish * TMAN * 12518 TNS-12518: TNS:listener could not hand off client connection TNS-12547: TNS:lost contact TNS-12560: TNS:protocol adapter error TNS-00517: Lost contact Solaris Error: 32: Broken pipe Note 340089.1 suggests to increase the processes. I, then, connected to the db using "connect '/as sydba'" XYZ>show parameter process ORA-01012: not logged on I have checked whether oracle processes exist. I did ps -aef | grep XYZ, and found that all processes were running. I exit from this session, and then connected '/as sysdba' from local box, so there is no business of orapw,e tc). When I tried to shutdown immediate, I got the following: XYZ> shutdown immediate; ORA-24324: service handle not initialized ORA-24323: value not allowed ORA-00020: maximum number of processes (%s) exceeded Then, I tried XYZ> shutdown abort; ORA-01031: insufficient privileges XYZ> exit Disconnected Next, I connected again. This time, the database allowed me to shutdown abort. My doubt is: why I got ORA-1031errors, even though I tried to shutdown as oracle user with group dba. Thanks, Pedro. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l