What do I do when Oracle Grid Cluster Services (CRS) won't start as system file permissions have been lost

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Stratos Matzouranis

The journey began in 2008 where I officially started working in the field of IT (IT). Starting the first semester of school I realized a special attraction towards databases and automation. I have been involved with databases such as Microsoft SQL Server / Oracle Database, data analysis and automations using the command line (CLI), Visual Basic for Applications and Python. Through years of experience I have developed these capabilities so that I can make my life easier. For me, the purpose of every IT guy and every office worker is to have the knowledge so that through tools he can work a little but produce a lot. Through this his website DataPlatform.gr I try to offer knowledge and propose solutions to everyday problems.

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In this article we will see what to do when one of the Oracle Cluster servers/nodes shows an error and the Cluster Services (CRS) do not start.

The symptom

When we go to start Cluster Services (CRS):

su root

crsctl start crs

It gives us the following error and won't boot:

CRS-4563: Insufficient user privileges.
CRS-4000: Command Start failed, or completed with errors.

If we go to GRID_HOME installed we see that all files have the same owner and permissions, which doesn't seem right:

cd $GRID_HOME

ls -ltr

If we go and run it cluvfy (with the oracle or grid user) to check the installation:

su oracle
cd $GRID_HOME/bin

./cluvfy comp software -n all -verbose

We will see that too many files have wrong permissions:

How is the problem made?

First we check if any Cluster service (CRS) is up:

su root
cd $GRID_HOME/bin

./crsctl check crs

If we see that something is still running, stop CRS:

./crsctl stop crs

If we have a Cluster with Grid Infrastructure 12c and then run the following as root user:

su root
cd $GRID_HOME/crs/install

./rootcrs.sh -init

If we have Standalone Grid Infrastructure 12c and then run the following as root user:

su root
cd $GRID_HOME/crs/install

./roothas.sh -init

If we have a Cluster with Grid Infrastructure up to 11.2 we run the following with root user:

su root
cd $GRID_HOME/crs/install

./rootcrs.pl -init

If we have Standalone Grid Infrastructure up to 11.2 we run the following with root user:

su root
cd $GRID_HOME/crs/install

./roothas.pl  -init

After the execution is complete, we check the permissions again:

cd $GRID_HOME/bin

ls -ltr

Now the permissions seem to have changed so we can try to bring up the Cluster (CRS):

crsctl start crs

CRS-4123: Oracle High Availability Services has been started.

And after some time we can test if all the resources are up:

crsctl status resource -t

If the database resource is not up, run the following with the oracle user:

su oracle

srvctl start database -d dbname

Sources:

• How to check and fix file permissions on Grid Infrastructure environment (Doc ID 1931142.1)
• Cluster Verification Utility Reference