Re: Oracle 12500 and 12506 errors when connecting

On 14 Feb 2005 08:20:03 -0800, andydoesntlikespam_at_yahoo.com wrote:

>When I try to connect to my Oracle 8i server running on Win 2k SP 4
>over TCP/IP, I get an ORA-12154 Could not connect to server. When I
>try to run the Configuration assistant, I get ORA-12500: TNS:listener
>failed to start a dedicated server process. I can't ping the server by
>connection name, but I can ping the servers name locally.
>
>Changes that happen locally was that this computer received all the
>Windows Updates for Windows 2000. When I am on the box locally, I can
>run LSNRCTL successfully, but I cannot run srvmgrl without getting a
>12506: TNS adapter protocol error. Can anyone please give any good
>suggestions? I've checked the HKLM\Software\Oracle\Home1 key and it
>looks like the paths are right. As far as I can, ORACLE_HOME and
>ORACLE_SID are not system variables, but I'm not sure. Thanks for your
>help.
>
>--Andy

I'm not sure what you are getting at
ora-12154 doesn't mean 'Can not connect to server' and ora-12506 doesn't exist and should probably mean ora-12560 protocol adapter error.

As to the first problem: on a client you shouldn't configure a listener and the absence of a started database will result in ora-12500. If you are getting ora-12500 on the server, either the database hasn't been started at all, or you reached the maximum number of processes.

Not issuing
set oracle_sid=<your sid> when <your_sid> != ORCL prior to starting svrmrgl will always result in ora-12560.

--
Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA