ORA-03113: Where does ServerManager get the information about databases?

As far as I understand it, the Oracle Server Manager does NOT use the tnsnames.ora to resolve the SID. The only "input" for it is the environment variable ORACLE_SID.

So: How can the ServerManager resolve the ORACLE_SID to the actual Oracle instance it has to start??

The cause for this question is that at my company we were facing a mysterious "ORA-03113 end-of-file on communication channel" error and had some strange effects:

Say, the only "valid" SID would be "DBS1":

• attempt 1 (non-existent SID) ------------ bash-2.04$ ORACLE_SID=foo bash-2.04$ export ORACLE_SID bash-2.04$ svrmgrl

Oracle Server Manager Release 3.1.6.0.0 - Production

Copyright (c) 1997, 1999, Oracle Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Oracle8i Enterprise Edition Release 8.1.6.1.0 - Production With the Partitioning option
JServer Release 8.1.6.0.0 - Production

SVRMGR>
------------- attempt 2 (correct SID) --------------

bash-2.04$ ORACLE_SID=DBS1
bash-2.04$ export ORACLE_SID
bash-2.04$ svrmgrl

Oracle Server Manager Release 3.1.6.0.0 - Production

Copyright (c) 1997, 1999, Oracle Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

ORA-03113: end-of-file on communication channel SVRMGR>

----------- end of examples -------------------

As you can see, if I use a non-existent SID, I can launch the ServerManager - I will get no results, though, because of the illegal SID, but I can "connect internal".

On the other hand: if I use the valid SID, the ServerManager prints the not-very-useful error message ORA-03113. I can not even connect internal (if I try, svrmgrl turns to a "defunc" process). I can do nothing!

After some guessings and experiments it seems to me that I could track down the problem easier if I could understand what makes the difference between the two callings. The difference is the SID, so how does ServerManager get to the instance when all it it passed is the ORACLE_SID? It is not tnsnames.ora and it is not /etc/oratab - what is it then?

Or has somebody other guessings for me?

BTW: TNSPING works perfectly for DBS1! But no connect is possible.

TIA
Alex Received on Mon Jul 29 2002 - 12:01:52 CDT