Can't login to oracle other than SYSDBA

Folks:

My apologies if this is a dumb question. I have only been a DBA for 8 months.

We have a huge database (400 GB or so). Once a month , we do a cold backup that takes 18 hours (slow tape drives...)

Anyway, after each cold backup , we have following problem:

Database is restarted.
After a few hours,
  You can login to oracle as sysdba, BUT on one else can.   For example, if you do, sqlplus usera, it asks for a password. Once you give the right password, it just sits there.   No command prompt , nothing.

At that point, systems resources are fine (CPU etc.).

The work around is to restart the DB. (we have to resort to shutdown abort). After going through this cycle 2/3 times, it finally does not happen again UNTIL next month's cold backup.

One theory has been proposed (just so you can have some for info) is that after cold backup is finished, all the application processing starts happening and they eventually run out something. What that something could be, that is not clear.

My questions:

1. what could cause this?
2. once this happens, what things should look for (as SYSDBA) to provide some clues?

THANK YOU.
-Mamun
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Fri Jun 09 2006 - 09:25:40 CDT