Riyaj Shamsudeen was very helpful and enabled me to find and resolve the problem. He suggested I checked DNS lookups and from that I discovered that the nisplus service on the server was disabled. I could not enable because the keyserv service was not running. Having fixed that nisplus started and the listener fired up straightaway (instead of hanging until timing out). I am stil unsure as to why I see no valid output from adapters on that server and I do on some other servers (but no all) Thanks list and Riyaj especially. John ________________________________ From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Hallas Sent: 08 November 2007 14:49 To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: adapters showing no protocols enabled Oracle 10.2.0.2 on Solaris X86 Installed Oracle and non DBA group users cannot use sqlplus imp exp etc. Patch 4516865 for fixing incorrect Oracle permissions after install is available but not for X86 chipset. I got the utilities working by chmod -R 755 from O_H down then relinked. Lsnrctl worked prior to that but it is not working now. Lsnrctl start gives Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=xxx)(PORT=1521))) TNS-12547: TNS:lost contact TNS-12560: TNS:protocol adapter error TNS-00517: Lost contact Solaris Error: 131: Connection reset by peer BJSS Limited, 1st Floor Coronet House, Queen Street, Leeds LS1 2TW. Registered in England with company number 2777575. http://www.bjss.co.uk