Introduction

Recently was supporting a colleague who was unable to start a Real Application Database after he had  created the environment by manual scripts. As i already mentioned in another post nothing wrong with exploring both methods ( either using DBCA (with care but hey any tool will come with a manual and  some shortcomings) or manual. Well if you decide to work manually  of course it will take maybe even  more discipline in setting up init.ora files , registering the database and its instances into the Grid Infra structure layer etc.  But generally speaking there is a challenge in either approach you choose. Well on to our case.  The Database would not start via the clusterware (with srvctl ) but manually  it was possible to start either of the two instances in this Rac.

Investigation:

Well first glimpse to see what might be going on:

SQL> select * from gv$instance;

INST_ID INSTANCE_NUMBER INSTANCE_NAME HOST_NAME VERSION STARTUP_TIME STATUS PAR THREAD# ARCHIVE LOG_SWITCH_WAIT
———- ————— —————- —————————————————————- —————– ——————- ———— — ———- ——- —————
LOGINS SHU DATABASE_STATUS INSTANCE_ROLE ACTIVE_ST BLO
———- — —————– —————— ——— —
1 1 MYDB1 server1hr 11.2.0.3.0 11.04.2013 16:14:31 OPEN YES 1 STARTED
ALLOWED NO ACTIVE PRIMARY_INSTANCE NORMAL NO

2 2 MYDB2 server2hr 11.2.0.3.0 11.04.2013 16:25:54 OPEN YES 2 STARTED
ALLOWED NO ACTIVE PRIMARY_INSTANCE NORMAL NO

That query  showed both instances running. 

Then the colleague tried:

srvctl start database -d  … 

PRCR-1079 : Failed to start resource ora.mydb.db

CRS-5017: The resource action “ora.mydb.db start” encountered the following error:
ORA-29760: instance_number parameter not specified
. For details refer to “(:CLSN00107:)” in “/opt/crs/product/11203_ee_64/crs/log/server1hr/agent/crsd/oraagent_oracle/oraagent_oracle.log”.

CRS-2674: Start of ‘ora.mydb.db’ on ‘server1hr’ failed
CRS-2632: There are no more servers to try to place resource ‘ora.mydb.db’ on that would satisfy its placement policy
CRS-5017: The resource action “ora.mydb.db start” encountered the following error:
ORA-29760: instance_number parameter not specified
. For details refer to “(:CLSN00107:)” in “/opt/crs/product/11203_ee_64/crs/log/server2hr/agent/crsd/oraagent_oracle/oraagent_oracle.log”.

CRS-2674: Start of ‘ora.mydb.db’ on ‘server2hr’ failed

Well then it was time to Google  for ORA-29760: instance_number parameter not specified

A Fellow blogger  mentioned the following Mos Note to solve this issue. And it once again proved that if you really settle for doing manual setup of you Rac environment you have to be well prepared and consistent in the naming of your parameters in you configuration file ( init.ora as a base for an spfile) and the way you enter services in the cluster layer. It once again proved that  names are registered in the way you enter them.  In plain English it is Case sensitive so  the old saying : what you type is what you get is very applicable.

Happy reading and as always best of luck.

Mathijs.