A Troubleshooting the Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installation Process

This appendix provides troubleshooting information for installing Oracle Grid Infrastructure.

A.1 General Installation Issues

The following is a list of examples of types of errors that can occur during installation. It contains the following issues:

Nodes unavailable for selection from the OUI Node Selection screen
Node nodename is unreachable
Shared disk access fails
Installation does not complete successfully on all nodes

Nodes unavailable for selection from the OUI Node Selection screen: Cause: Oracle Grid Infrastructure is either not installed, or the Oracle Grid Infrastructure services are not up and running.; Action: Install Oracle Grid Infrastructure, or review the status of your installation. Consider restarting the nodes, because doing so may resolve the problem.

Node nodename is unreachable

Cause: Unavailable IP host.

Action: Attempt the following:

Run the command ipconfig /all. Compare the output of this command with the contents of the C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file to ensure that the node IP is listed.
Run the command nslookup to see if the host is reachable.

Shared disk access fails: Cause: Windows 2003 R2 does not automount RAW drives by default. This is a change from Windows 2000.; Action: Change the automount to enabled. Refer to "Enabling Automounting for Windows"

Installation does not complete successfully on all nodes: Cause: If a configuration issue prevents the Oracle grid infrastructure software from installing successfully on all nodes, you might see an error message such as "Timed out waiting for the CRS stack to start", or when you exit the installer you might notice that the Oracle Clusterware managed resources were not created on some nodes, or have a status other than ONLINE on those nodes.; Action: One solution to this problem is to deconfigure Oracle Clusterware on the nodes where the installation did not complete successfully, and then fix the configuration issue that caused the installation on that node to error out. After the configuration issue has been fixed, you can then rerun the scripts used during installation to configure Oracle Clusterware. See "Deconfiguring Oracle Clusterware without Removing Binaries" for details.

A.2 About the Oracle Clusterware Alert Log

During installation, the Oracle Clusterware alert log is the first place to look for serious errors. In the event of an error, it can contain path information to diagnostic logs that can provide specific information about the cause of errors.

After installation, Oracle Clusterware posts alert messages when important events occur. For example, you might see alert messages from the Cluster Ready Services (CRS) daemon when it starts, if it aborts, if the failover process fails, or if automatic restart of a CRS resource failed.

Enterprise Manager monitors the Clusterware log file and posts an alert on the Cluster Home page if an error is detected. For example, if a voting disk is not available, then a CRS-1604 error is raised, and a critical alert is posted on the Cluster Home page. You can customize the error detection and alert settings on the Metric and Policy Settings page.

The location of the Oracle Clusterware log file is Grid_home\log\hostname\alerthostname.log, where Grid_home is the directory in which Oracle Grid infrastructure was installed and hostname is the host name of the local node.

A.3 Oracle Clusterware Install Actions Log Errors and Causes

During installation of the Oracle Grid Infrastructure software, a log file named installActions<Date_Timestamp>.log is written to the %TEMP%\OraInstall<Date_Timestamp> directory.

The following is a list of potential errors in the installActions.log:

PRIF-10: failed to initialize the cluster registry

Configuration assistant "Oracle Private Interconnect Configuration Assistant" failed
KFOD-0311: Error scanning device device_path_name
Step 1: checking status of Oracle Clusterware cluster

Step 2: configuring OCR repository

ignoring upgrade failure of ocr(-1073740972)

failed to configure Oracle Cluster Registry with CLSCFG, ret -1073740972

Each of these error messages can be caused by one of the following issues:

A.3.1 The OCFS for Windows format is not recognized on one or more of the remote cluster nodes

If you are using Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) for Windows for your OCR and Voting disk partitions, then:

Leave the OUI window in place.
Restart the second node, and any additional nodes.
Retry the assistants.

A.3.2 You are on a Windows 2003 system, and Automount of new drives is not enabled:

If this is true, then:

For Oracle RAC on Windows Server 2003, you must issue the following commands on all nodes:

C:\> diskpart
DISKPART> automount enable

If you did not enable automounting of disks before attempting to install Oracle Grid Infrastructure, and the configuration assistants fail during installation, then you will need to clean up your Oracle Clusterware install, enable automounting on all nodes, reboot all nodes, and then start the Oracle Clusterware install again.

A.3.3 Symbolic links for disks were not removed

When you stamp a disk with ASMTOOL, it creates symbolic links for the disks. If these links are not removed when the disk is deleted or reconfigured, then errors can occur when attempting to access the disks.

To correct the problem, you can try stamping the disks again with ASMTOOL.

A.3.4 Discovery string used by Oracle ASM is incorrect

When specifying Oracle ASM for storage, you have the option of changing the default discovery string used to locate the disks. If the discovery string is set incorrectly, Oracle ASM will not be able to locate the disks.

A.3.5 You used a period in one of the node names during Oracle Clusterware install

Periods (.) are not permitted in node names. Instead, use a hyphen (-).

To resolve a failed installation, remove traces of the Oracle installation, and reinstall with a permitted node name.

A.3.6 Ignoring upgrade failure of ocr(-1073740972)

This error indicates that the user that is performing the installation does not have Administrator privileges.

A.4 Performing Cluster Diagnostics During Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installations

If the installer does not display the Node Selection page, then use the following command syntax to check the integrity of the Cluster Manager:

cluvfy comp clumgr -n node_list -verbose

In the preceding syntax example, the variable node_list is the list of nodes in your cluster, separated by commas.

Note:

If you encounter unexplained installation errors during or after a period when scheduled tasks are run, then your scheduled task may have deleted temporary files before the installation is finished. Oracle recommends that you complete the installation before scheduled tasks are run, or disable scheduled tasks that perform cleanup until after the installation is completed.

A.5 Interconnect Configuration Issues

If you use multiple network interface cards (NICs) for the interconnect, then the NICs should be bonded at the operating system level. Otherwise, the failure of a single NIC will affect the availability of the cluster node.

If you install Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle RAC, then they must use the same NIC or teamed NIC cards for the interconnect.

If you use teamed NIC cards, then they must be on the same subnet.

If you encounter errors, then perform the following system checks:

Verify with your network providers that they are using the correct cables (length, type) and software on their switches. In some cases, to avoid bugs that cause disconnects under loads, or to support additional features such as Jumbo Frames, you may need a firmware upgrade on interconnect switches, or you may need newer NIC driver or firmware at the operating system level. Running without such fixes can cause later instabilities to Oracle RAC databases, even though the initial installation seems to work.
Review VLAN configurations, duplex settings, and auto-negotiation in accordance with vendor and Oracle recommendations.