Portal not starting - Error: Couldn't connect to DB

Question

Hi
I have installed a WAS ABAP 6.40 stack running on AIX 5.2 and Oracle 9.2.0.6. I then successfully installed a JAVA add-on stack. I then successfully installed a portal.
The portal was working fine, I could successfully logon to it via the url http://<fully qualified hostname>:58400/irj (84 being my instance number)
Now the portal no longer works. Some investigation has found that my J2EE engine is no longer starting.
When I enter the command startsap as <sid>adm, I see the following:
Checking BWD Database
J2EE Database is not available via  test
See logfile JdbcCon.log
Below is an extract from the file /home/<sid>adm/JdbCcon.log
Error: Couldn't connect to DB
java.sql.SQLException: ORA-01034: ORACLE not available
ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist
IBM AIX RISC System/6000 Error: 2: No such file or directory
Also from the log file /usr/sap/<SID>/DVEBMGS84/work/std_server0.out I can see the following:
<SAP J2EE Engine Version 6.40 PatchLevel 87289.311 is shutting down!>
If anyone can advise, it would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Sam

Answer 1

Hi Sam,
Sometimes it is only because you have not set the environment correctly (ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_SID).
Is your TNSNAMES.ORA correct?
If you do a "ps -ef |grep oracle" you should get a list of processes. Make sure you see PMON and SMON processes as well as the LSNR processes.
If you don't see the LSNR processes start the listener.
If this don't help try to start the DB manually and check with tsnping, otherwise come back again with mor info.
regards
Wolfgang