HELP!!! NEWBIE IN TROUBLE

Hello... And thanks in advance for anyone that can help me with my problem.

I've loaded Oracle 8i on Red Hat Linux 6.2, the install itself went smooth (After a couple false starts) but it seems to have completed successfully. I connect to my instance via 'svrmgrl' and login as 'connect internal' (I've logged in as system/manager as well). It seems to connect, I try to start the instance 'startup nomount' and I get the following error.

SVRMGR> startup nomount;
ORACLE instance started.
ORA-01012: not logged on

I can't seem to stay connected to my instance. I quit 'svrmgrl' and do a 'ps -ef' and see the Oracle processes running in Linux. It seems like the only command I can successfully issue is 'shutdown abort' ('shutdown immediate' fails too). Someone suggested I verify the NLS_LANG variable, which was set. This happens each and every time I try to connect. I can't figure out why I can't maintane my connection to the instance. If someone could offer a tip or solution I would be extremly greateful I'm sort of getting towards the end of my rope here.

Thanks Received on Tue Jan 16 2001 - 10:09:40 CST