Hi Gurus, I'm setting up a test 9i rac. I was running on spfile at /var/opt/oracle/orcl/orcl/spfileorcl.ora (shared location for a 2 node rac) . I also noticed that the show parameters spfile returned /var/opt/oracle/orcl/orcl/spfileorcl.ora (note it is just spfileorcl.ora and not spfileorcl1.ora/spfileorcl2.ora. I was setting up transparent application failover when i had problems with local_listener and remote_listener. I had to eventually create pfile from spfile and delete the values related to local_listener and remote_listener. And then i restart the database with respective pfile. pfile were located in /opt/oracle/product/9.2.0/dbs/initorcl1.ora (node1) and /opt/oracle/product/9.2.0/dbs/initorcl2.ora (node2). Database startup fine with pfiles. And then when i try to create a spfile, it creates 2 spfiles on respective dbs directories that is /opt/oracle/product/9.2.0/dbs/spfileorcl1.ora (node1) and /opt/oracle/product/9.2.0/dbs/spfileorcl2.ora (node2) . Before the issue began, the spfile was a single file in /var/opt/oracle/orcl/orcl/spfileorcl.ora (shared location) . I copy one of the spfileorcl1.ora and rename it to be spfileorcl.ora and startup the database bouncing back with the above said error. It asks me for both initorcl1.ora and initorcl2.ora. I do not know how to club the two spfiles and create a single spfile. Searched the internet but nothing seems to match my issue. Doono what i'm missing here. Any help is greatly appreciated. Please help. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l