Listers, I find myself at a loss right now. this is an 11g EM (11.1.0.1.0) on Linux x86_64. I am trying to connect to the 'services' page of a cluster (10.2.0.4.0) of 4 nodes. I connect to the EM, then go to targets, Databases, click on RACDB, then the availability tab, then cluster managed service database. Then it asks to specify both an OS and a DB user. The db user needs to be sysdba. So I provide the 'oracle' credentials and the 'sys' credentials and I get Connection to database and cluster database RACDB as user sys failed. This is consistently happening. I am certain that the password I am using for both the sys and oracle users are correct. (connecting from sqlplus and toad works ok) I tried to create a new sysdba users with the dba and connect roles and I got the same error. from the OMS server I am unable to connect using sql*plus because the target host does not exist. I checked and the OMS home does not have a tnsnames file. I assume that since the target was configured and is otherwise working flawlessly, this has nothing to do with that. I checked and I have both access to the listener and agent port. The same with ssh port. I tried google and metalink, but the error is too generic and neither was much help. Is there a log or a trace I can enable or something to see a more detailed error? thanks in advance Alan.-