Veritas cluster and Oracle database startup

Hello all,

We are experiencing an interesting problem that hopefully someone has encountered previously.

We have an Oracle 9.2.0.6 database that is running on a Solaris 9 server. The server is part of a Veritas cluster, so that if either the server itself or the database go down, the cluster detaches the filesystems associated with the database to another server, mounts them up and starts the listener and the database.

A test of the system works fine, with one caveat: after failing over, apparently the database is being started with the pfile=init.ora option, instead of using the spfile:

SQL> alter system set undo_suppress_errors=true scope=both; alter system set undo_suppress_errors=true scope=both *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-32001: write to SPFILE requested but no SPFILE specified at startup

It seems that a PFILE specification is required by the Veritas cluster software. Is this absolutely necessary? Our preference would be to have an pfile and spfile defined separately, and to start up the database with the spfile. Our preference would be to NOT specify a pfile on startup, so that the database uses the spfile.

I know that we can just have the pfile point to the spfile, but our preference would be to have a pfile with the database values in it, so that we can drop it into SCCS and track what changes are made and when they are made.

If any one can pass along andy info about the requirments for Veritas clustering, it would be greatly appreciated. I will also post this question to a Veritas group.

The Veritas cluster software version info is below.

Lou Avrami

   PKGINST:  VRTScscm
      NAME:  VERITAS Cluster Server Cluster Manager
  CATEGORY:  optional
      ARCH:  sparc
   VERSION:  4.3
   BASEDIR:  /
    VENDOR:  VERITAS Software Corp.
      DESC:  VERITAS Cluster Server Cluster Manager
    PSTAMP:  4.3P1 11/08/05-20:55:48
  INSTDATE:  Dec 08 2006 14:49
    STATUS:  completely installed
     FILES:      216 installed pathnames
                   3 shared pathnames
                  21 directories
                   2 executables
               14930 blocks used (approx)

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