shutdown normal not shutting down

I have a problem shutting down an oracle database. The oracle version is 8.1.7.2 running on a solaris 8 system. Basically I have tried shutting down the database with "shutdown normal" but it will not close as there are connections to the database. These connections are not active , the users have long since terminated their sessions leaving some old connections hanging around not doing anything.

I have tried "connect internal", "shutdown immediate" but am unable to do this as "The Database is not available". I have also tried starting the database but this fails as a shutdown in progress. I would very much like to shut down the database cleanly.

Is it safe to kill the users processes at operating system level and if I do so will this enable the database to close cleanly ? Otherwise is "shutdown abort" or "startup force" safe or will I be causing more problems.

Generally speaking what is the best way to get oracle to close under these circumstances.

I feel that this must be a fairly common problem and if I knew the first thing about oracle I should be able to sort it out but, you guessed it, I don't know the first thing about oracle.

Regards

Dave Received on Tue Mar 30 2004 - 13:36:33 CST