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Tracing ORA01031
NOV 2

Posted by alesk

Several months ago I got a brand new Lenovo Think Centre workstation at workplace with Windows 7
Enterprise Edition (x64). Of course, the first thing I always do is to install a bunch of Oracle software that
serves as a playground. So, I installed 10gR2 and 11gR2 and created test databases for both versions. In
addition to RDBMS I installed several other tools that I use more or less on a daily basis, or that I need
while reproducing end user errors.
Everything worked as expected. At least at the beginning. After awhile, I noticed unsuspected error while
connecting locally as sysdba on 11g instance.
I could successfully connect / as sysdba for two or three times in a row after fresh OS reboot, then
when I tried to connect for third or forth time in a row as sysdba, I got ORA01031 error out of the blue
sky:

Being a member of ORA_DBA OS group, having SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES = (NTS) in SQLNET.ORA,

not having any issues with 10g database, just with a 11g, having the same issue while being a standalone
machine as well as being a domain member workstation
I soon run out explanation other than: it must be something about BEQ protocol in 11g and/or some OS
specific issue, Ill troubleshoot later. Well, a lot later :).
Today, I noticed Miladin Modrakovic recently wrote a blog post about errorstack tracing. Hmmcould this
help me resolve my sporadic ORA1031 errors while trying to connect locally as sysdba.
First, I issued:
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SQL>altersystemsetevents'1031tracenameerrorstacklevel3;namelibrary_cachelevel10';

and then I was trying to connect without a password:

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Now, I should have a trace file generated for the ORA01031 error, so I looked in alert.log for trace file:
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...
WedNov0214:42:432011
ErrorsinfileE:\ORACLE\diag\rdbms\test11\test11\trace\test11_ora_1936.trc:
ORA01031:insufficientprivileges

It took me some time glimpsing through file test11_ora_1936.trc as it was about 38MB in size.
When I saw tnsManager entry in error stack, I knew something weird is going on

What the heck is tnsManager* doing in the trace file, if Im not using this service at all in my 11g
installment.
It turned out that I somehow forgot that I setup TNS_ADMIN variable system wide pointing to the
tnsManager home directory. In that directory sqlnet.ora file was not setup properly (NTS was turned off),
dont have a clue why 10g worked despite that and why 11g worked sometimes. The bottom line is that
thanks to error stack trace I was able to pinpoint the problem.
Finally, I disabled tracing with:
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sql>altersystemsetevents'1031tracenameerrorstackoff;namelibrary_cacheoff';

As Miladin pointed out in his blog, errostack tracing is useful also for other common errors, such as ORA
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00942, where Oracle reports error and then its up to you to pinpoint which permission is missing and this
is more often than not a pain in the *ss.
Side note*: if youre not familiar with tnsManager then you dont know what youre missing, its a great little
gem.

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