NameServer on AIX 4/Oracle 7.3.4

Hi all!

We are in the process of upgrading 7.1.x and 7.3.2 instances on (mostly) AIX 4.1.x servers to Y2K Compliant AIX 4.2.1 and Oracle 7.3.4 instances. Currently, we are using AIX 4.1/Oracle 7.3.2 based nameservers (two of 'em) without the Config database, i.e. we register TNS entries directly to the nameserver using scripts rather then configuring them from a NETMAN database. The structure is a simple, flat one (all Dbs with .world!)

Everything else is Ok apart from the Nameservers. Starting up the Oracle Nameserver on an AIX 4.2.1 box with Oracle 7.3.4 displays the following error:

NAMESCTL> start
Starting "/local/bin/oracle/7.3.4/bin/names"...server not started, errors follow
TNS-12547: TNS:lost contact
 TNS-12560: TNS:protocol adapter error
  TNS-00517: Lost contact
   IBM/AIX RISC System/6000 Error: 32: Broken pipe

A chance test on another 7.3.4 server (same OS, same S/w) showed that this does _not_ happen (i.e. nameserver starts up) when the caching directory $ORACLE_HOME/network/names is _not_ present! Implementing this (i.e. starting a nameserver without caching) means that the TNS registry entries will have to loaded from a script everytime the nameserver is started up (usually at boot time). We are not very comfortable with that, although it is a workaround...

I tried an upgrade from the installed 7.3.4.0.0 to the 7.3.4.3.0 patchset (latest on AIX?), of no avail - the patchset docu did not mention any bugs in Nameserver anyway. A search of MetaLink showed that this seems to a generic bug (observed on Solaris/ DG) and there seems to be specific fixes provided. As usual, MetaLink is vague about what exactly should be done). I am trying to raise a TAR with local Oracle Support - this takes a while by the time the problem is acknowledged and answered, so I am looking at the collective resources of the lists. Have any of you come across this issue? If so, how did you sort thos out? Were there any patchsets specific to AIX?

Thanks,
John Kanagaraj
Brunei Shell Petroleum

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