Hi, This is partly off topic, but two things you might want to check. 1) Since you just started seeing this issue, do you use any type of network type accounts on unix? I forget what the correct name of it is (Its been awhile). Anyway, if you Unix box resolves groups and names at a central location, make sure that service didn't die on the server. 2) Did you recently change your uid or gid on the box recently? We had to do this on one of our systems and changed all of the files to reflect this change too. However, with 9i oracle started hard coding the group name within the actual oracle binary. However, the error message you are getting tells me that this isn't what you are seeing. Good luck ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------