Hi J., Your instance, specifically PMON, is autoregistering the instance to the default listener, which is called LISTENER and is at port 1521. If you do a "lsnrctl status listener", you should see all your databases, regardless of whether or not they're in the listener.ora. To prevent the autoregistration, look up the LOCAL_LISTENER init.ora parameter. Also, in most flavors of Linux, you can see active ports with the netstat command: netstat -l or netstat -l | grep LISTEN should give you what you need. Given the nature of your question, you will want to read up on the Listener: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/network.920/a96580/listener.htm Only one is generally needed per server and can handle multiple instances/services. Of course, there are exceptions... :) HTH! GL! Rich > Why would a database not connect under a new listener on a different port > (1522) but will still connect under the old listener (1521) even though it > is no longer in the sid_desc list for that listener and both listeners have > been bounced? > > I created a second listener using netca (9206 on Linux) on a different port. > I then altered listener.ora to move one of the databases so that it would > now be under the description for the second listener on the other port. I > stopped and restarted both listeners. When I try to connect, it will still > only connect to the 1521 port listener (even though it is not under that > description anymore). I get ORA-12535 when trying to connect with it under > the correct port (1522) with the second listener. > > On Linux, I am not sure how to tell if the 1522 port is open. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l