ORA-01031: insufficient privileges -- from user oracle running

Hi:

I have an Oracle 8173 db running on Solaris 2.8 box (called rex) and today I found something that I am trying to understand. When I login to the Unix box as user "oracle" (which I used to install oracle software), I can manaully run svrmgrl, then connect as "internal", I can do "startup" and "shutdown immediate" with no problem. I have been doing this for years.

But if I still log in as "oracle", at unix prompt I do:

rex$ which dbstart
/oracle/product/8.1.7/bin/dbstart

rex$ dbstart

SQL*Plus: Release 8.1.7.0.0 - Production on Wed Sep 3 20:57:16 2003

(c) Copyright 2000 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.

connect internalORA-01031: insufficient privileges connect internal
Database "YPD" warm started.
rex$ ps -ef|grep oracle
  oracle 2268 1 0 16:54:27 ? 0:00
/oracle/product/8.1.7/bin/tnslsnr LISTENER -inherit
  oracle 11195 11152 0 20:57:26 pts/2 0:00 grep oracle   oracle 11152 11150 0 20:56:19 pts/2 0:00 -sh

I know "dbstart" worked before because it was called by "auto start" script that I put in /etc/init.d/oracle and /etc/rc2.d/S99oracle last year.

I also checked /var/opt/oracle/oratab and environmental variables:

rex$ env|grep ORACLE

ORACLE_ADMIN=/oracle/admin
ORACLE_BASE=/oracle
ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/8.1.7
ORACLE_SID=YPD

And they seem working fine (again I can use svrmgrl without any problems).

Does anyone know where I should fix so I can start the instance by running script "dbstart"? TIA.

Guang

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Author: Guang Mei
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