ORA-00257

I restored a database to a remote site today as part of a test.

 

In the screen shot below, I was logged on to the UNIX server as user oracle. I then tried to connect to the restored database using OS authentication. This failed so I connected as SYS instead.

 

I investigated the cause in a separate session (not shown here). For some reason, the archive area had incorrect permissions (it was owned by root, not oracle) so the redo logs could not be copied there. I changed the permissions on the archive directory so that oracle could write to it (this is not shown here either).

 

Then I was able to switch log file groups and connect to the database as ORACLE.

 

Note the error message, which says: Connect internal only. This is left over from Oracle 8 when you could use the command connect internal to login to the database as SYS:

 

UNIX > sqlplus /

 

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Production on Wed Jan 25 10:49:21 2012

 

Copyright (c) 1982, 2006, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.

 

ERROR:

ORA-00257: archiver error. Connect internal only, until freed.

 

Enter user-name: / as sysdba

 

Connected to:

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production

With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL >
  

At this point I changed the ownership of the archive area in a separate UNIX session using chown. Then I returned to this SQL session and continued as shown below:
  

SQL > alter system switch logfile;

 

System altered.

 

SQL > alter system switch logfile;

 

System altered.

 

SQL > conn /

Connected.

SQL > show user

USER is "ORACLE"

SQL >