I’ve seen that happen before – if you shut it down with the //, and then start it back up with the /, all should be well, iirc. The issue is that with the extra // it still knows how to find the spfile/pfile on startup, whatnot, but when sqlplus tries to start it doesn’t match the ORACLE_HOME correctly. Matt ________________________________ From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Andrew Kerber Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 9:47 AM To: ORACLE-L Subject: slightly OT, appears to be Sun OS issue I am running into something really strange in one of our Solaris zones. I expect that the problem stems from someone not entering the Oracle home path correctly on installation, since it appears to have an extra '/' in the Oracle home name, but I have never seen this elsewhere, and cannot figure out how to fix it. Its probably easier for you to look at my steps below than try to explain it further. For some reason, I have to have a '//' in the Oracle home name to connect to the ASM instance: kerbera@dwprdap01-> sudo su - oracle Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.10 Generic January 2005 You have mail. oracle@dwprdap01-> ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/asm oracle@dwprdap01-> export ORACLE_HOME oracle@dwprdap01-> PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH oracle@dwprdap01-> export PATH oracle@dwprdap01-> ORACLE_SID=+ASM oracle@dwprdap01-> export ORACLE_SID oracle@dwprdap01-> echo $ORACLE_HOME /oracle/product/asm oracle@dwprdap01-> sqlplus / as sysdba SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Mon Oct 11 07:16:32 2010 Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved. Connected to an idle instance. SQL> exit Disconnected oracle@dwprdap01-> echo $ORACLE_HOME /oracle/product/asm oracle@dwprdap01-> exit kerbera@dwprdap01-> sudo su - oracle Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.10 Generic January 2005 You have mail. oracle@orap01-> echo $ORACLE_HOME /oracle/product/db oracle@orap01-> ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product//asm oracle@orap01-> export ORACLE_HOME oracle@orap01-> PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH oracle@orap01-> export PATH oracle@orap01-> ORACLE_SID=+ASM oracle@orap01-> export ORACLE_SID oracle@orap01-> echo $ORACLE_HOME /oracle/product//asm oracle@orap01-> sqlplus / as sysdba SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Mon Oct 11 07:19:05 2010 Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved. Connected to: Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options SQL> select instance_name from v$instance; INSTANCE_NAME ---------------- +ASM SQL> exit Disconnected from Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options oracle@orap01-> echo $ORACLE_HOME /oracle/product//asm oracle@orap01-> -- Andrew W. Kerber 'If at first you dont succeed, dont take up skydiving.'