tnsnames problem

hi

i know there are some tnsnames-threads already, but i could not get them to solve my problem:

i have a db running on a server and try to connect to it from a remote red-hat machine with oracle client installed. when i try sqlplus USER/pw_at_xxx
with xxx the name of an entry in the tnsnames.ora-file it says ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve service name but when i try
sqlplus "USER/pw_at_xxx"
with xxx the whole connectionstring instead of the name of the entry in the tnsnames.ora-file it works. my conclusion is that the tnsnames.ora is not found

so my question is:
do i have to make the tnsnames.ora-file known somewhere ?

any hint would be nice

thanx in advance ! Received on Thu Oct 07 2004 - 07:57:22 CDT