Database won't mount, but no errors reported ???

A system running Oracle 8.0.6 under Solaris failed overnight. Attempts to restart it just hang. If I do a startup nomount, it reaches a 'started' state OK and server manager comes back with its prompt. On the other hand if I do a startup mount it hangs. There's nothing in the alert log that indicates any sort of problem - the last entry is 'alter database mount'. I've also left it a long, long time just in case it was taking its time loading, but that has made no difference. Once it's in this hung state, not even control-C gets a response - the telnet session to the server appears dead.. There are no dumps and there's nothing in dmesg to indicate a more fundamental problem.

I've tried restoring from a full hot backup taken the previous night, but the results are exactly the same.

Fortunately this is an inactive legacy system that is only used occasionally to provide access to old, virtually-static, data. My next step is probably going to be a restore from the last cold backup.

Am I missing something here? I haven't seen Oracle 'fail silently' in this way before, so I'm inclined to think it's not a database problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Mike Received on Thu Jan 16 2003 - 14:26:15 CST