Ron - Thanks, and thanks everyone for the input. We are using scripts to set the environment variables. The problem turned out to be not all variables were getting set correctly. I read the consensus that LD_LIBRARY_PATH was probably the culprit. I found out that UNIX_PATH is a home-grown variable. I won't get to experiment any more until the next build. This definitely produced strange problems, hopefully nobody else will hit this. If you do, check your variables. Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ron Rogers Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 1:06 PM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; DENNIS WILLIAMS Subject: Re: UNIX_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH Dennis, When I went to an Oracle Apps demo the instructor had the database and the apps on the same laptop. In order to set the environmentals correctly for each part of the demo he had the environmentals in separate scripts such as appsenv or dataenv. When he wanted to switch environmentals he would execute the required scripts. It might be a good idea to set each Oracle installation with it's own environmentals and not set them in the login profile. That way you could switch between installations be executing the environmental script and possible end some of the available confusion. Ron >>> DENNIS WILLIAMS <DWILLIAMS@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 12/14/2004 12:41:25 PM >>> The proliferation of Oracle patchsets has me experimenting with multiple Oracle installations on the same Solaris server. I recently went through some weird problems in creating a database under this arrangement. It turns out that the environment variables LD_LIBRARY_PATH and UNIX_PATH were set but not set correctly. This got me thinking, do I even need to set these variables? Dennis Williams DBA Lifetouch, Inc. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l