MuckNet

If while installing oracle DB on linux, if you get the following two messages:

ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve connect identifier specified

ORA-0107: invalid username/password; logon denied

It probably means that you have chosen A) to create a DB while installing oracle, and B) chosen not to read the full set of installation instructions(10gR2 on x64 Linux) available on oracles website. I was guilty of both a couple week ago, and when searching for those error messages together I didn’t find anything. I then went back and read through the entire documentation and found the following password recommendations tidbit, I had previously skipped over thinking “pshah! I know how to create a good password! I don’t need oracle telling ME how to create good passwords”. Oops.

Here is a link to oracles 10gR2 tech reference site, which contains lots of good reading material.

Here is a quote from the relevent section of the installation guide, but please read the whole thing.

Password recommendations

Apply the following guidelines when specifying passwords:

• Passwords must be between 4 and 30 characters long.
• Passwords must be from the database character set and can include the underscore (_), dollar ($), and pound sign (#) characters.
• Passwords must not start with a numeral.
• Passwords must not be the same as the user name.
• Passwords must not be Oracle reserved words.
• The SYS account password must not be change_on_install.
• The SYSTEM account password must not be manager.
• The SYSMAN account password must not be sysman.
• The DBSNMP account password must not be dbsnmp.
• If you choose to use the same password for all the accounts, then that password must not be change_on_install, manager, sysman, or dbsnmp.
• Passwords should have at least 1 alphabetic, 1 numeric, and 1 punctuation mark character
• Passwords should not be simple or obvious words, such as welcome, account, database, and user.

P.S. This problem is not unique to the installation of Oracle, but when I searched google I found several people complaining about this exact problem during installation, with no resolution. I’m hoping that an installation focused article will make its way to the top of the search results for people to find. If you are getting the above error messages when you run dbca, you have the same problem, since the install app, just calls dbca.

If you find this post useful, tell me! Thanks!