“DBCA could not startup the ASM instance configured on this node” error for lower versions with 11GR2 GI

Last 3 days ,I have been trying to have the toy environment at home, for 11GR2 upgrade project at work.

The challenge was building exactly same environment on virtual machine. Problem is that I did not built the environment at work so I had no idea about tricks which are not clear in doc.

The environment is;

Oracle 2 node RAC with 11GR2 clusterware July PSU with ASM storage

Database with 10.2.0.4.2  with no local listener.

I installed the grid with some minor problems which are not todays topic. Problems solved and grid was completely healthy.

I then installed 10.2.0.4 binaries pinned the nodes for lower version installation as documented in official installation doc like below from GI home

[root@cosarac1 ~]$
crsctl pin css -n cosarac1,cosarac2

 

 


[oracle@cosarac1 ~]$ olsnodes -t -n
cosarac1        1       Pinned
cosarac2        2       Pinned

And I ran dbca from 10.2.0.4  and when I chose storage as ASM I started to get “DBCA could not startup the ASM instance configured on this node. To proceed with the database creation using ASM, ASM instance needs to be up and running. Do you want to recreate ASM instance on this node?”  warning.

Checked if ASM is up and running and it was and also being listened by my default listener. So what was the problem ?

Google+otn forums is again the answer

Basically during the installation you need to link the listener.ora in oracle home to listener.ora in grid home

cd <10G_DB_HOME>/network/admin

ln –s <11G_GRID_HOME>/network/admin/endpoints_listener.ora listener.ora

After you create the link it, please do not expect that  it will  just work , because it won’t:)

You also need to have TNS_ADMIN env setting to make dbca work with ASM. (You don’t need to set it on both nodes you only need to set it in the session of the node you run dbca.)

export TNS_ADMIN=<10G_DB_HOME>/network/admin

There is also a bug and one off patch available (8288940) but because our environment did not have 10.2.0.4 home patched with that one of patch  (At office DB was installed before GI upgrade) I did not bother to install the patch when there is a beautiful easy peasy solution.

What I learnt from this  creating the same toy environment at home practice is that,  building a VM RAC following a guide is just 3-4 hours work (for this particular one I followed Tim Halls 11GR2 RAC installation Guide for RAC on Virtualbox )but once you change some of the things in the tutorial  you follow,  then you invite the trouble which is very teaching practice. I learned hell a lot just with this 2 node RAC installation.  Once you learn how to install a rac I suggest you to try to learn how to break a RAC installation 🙂

Next challenge is building the DR of the Same environment (not with RAC due to resource problem). Maybe I can find something to write about.