Have you tried to comment out the automatic undo parameters and so you can startup the db with old fashioned RBS, (since the system RBS is there...) just long enough to offline and drop the undo tablespace, then reset everything and create a new one, restarting the db with automatic undo post recovery? I've never tried it myself, but I remember reading somewhere that it was an option when the undo was not cooperating in a recovery scenario... Kellyn Pedersen Multi-Platform DBA I-Behavior Inc. http://www.linkedin.com/in/kellynpedersen "Go away before I replace you with a very small and efficient shell script..." --- On Wed, 11/11/09, Maureen English <maureen.english@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: From: Maureen English <maureen.english@xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Database won't startup after system crash To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 6:35 PM One of our systems crashed yesterday and now one of the databases that was running on it won't start up. When I try to startup the database, it looks like everything is fine until it tries to open the database. It does the crash recovery, but then terminates when opening the database. The messages in the trace file are the same as in the alert log. Per Oracle Support, I tried setting an init parameter to offline the rollback segment, but that didn't make any difference. I did a dbv on all of the datafiles and got no errors. Any comments/suggestions? I do have an open SR...My Oracle Support seems to be functioning better today. I'm getting the following message in the alert log: ... Wed Nov 11 10:15:33 2009 ALTER DATABASE OPEN Wed Nov 11 10:15:34 2009 Beginning crash recovery of 1 threads parallel recovery started with 7 processes Wed Nov 11 10:15:35 2009 Started redo scan Wed Nov 11 10:15:35 2009 Completed redo scan 0 redo blocks read, 0 data blocks need recovery Wed Nov 11 10:15:35 2009 Started redo application at Thread 1: logseq 1160, block 2, scn 8606018842 Wed Nov 11 10:15:35 2009 Recovery of Online Redo Log: Thread 1 Group 5 Seq 1160 Reading mem 0 Mem# 0: /XXXX02/ORACLE/logs/redo05aXXXX.log Mem# 1: /XXXX03/ORACLE/logs/redo05bXXXX.log Wed Nov 11 10:15:35 2009 Completed redo application Wed Nov 11 10:15:35 2009 Completed crash recovery at Thread 1: logseq 1160, block 2, scn 8606038843 0 data blocks read, 0 data blocks written, 0 redo blocks read Wed Nov 11 10:15:36 2009 Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 1161 (thread open) Thread 1 opened at log sequence 1161 Current log# 1 seq# 1161 mem# 0: /XXXX02/ORACLE/logs/redo01aXXXX.log Current log# 1 seq# 1161 mem# 1: /XXXX03/ORACLE/logs/redo01bXXXX.log Successful open of redo thread 1 Wed Nov 11 10:15:36 2009 MTTR advisory is disabled because FAST_START_MTTR_TARGET is not set Wed Nov 11 10:15:36 2009 SMON: enabling cache recovery Wed Nov 11 10:15:36 2009 ORA-01555 caused by SQL statement below (SQL ID: 4krwuz0ctqxdt, Query Duration=1257966936 sec, SCN: 0x0002.00f5bb40): Wed Nov 11 10:15:36 2009 select ctime, mtime, stime from obj$ where obj# = :1 Wed Nov 11 10:15:36 2009 Errors in file /ORACLE/home/admin/XXXX/udump/xxxx_ora_12746.trc: ORA-00704: bootstrap process failure ORA-00704: bootstrap process failure ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 1 ORA-01555: snapshot too old: rollback segment number 10 with name "_SYSSMU10$" too small Error 704 happened during db open, shutting down database USER: terminating instance due to error 704 Instance terminated by USER, pid = 12746 ORA-1092 signalled during: ALTER DATABASE OPEN... - Maureen -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l