A Grid Infrastructure Installation Adventure

I was very used to create ASM instance manually before 11gR2. With 11gR2 we must to install Grid Infrastructure even on sigle instance databases if we’re going to use ASM. In my last installation i had strange errors that i’ll share below. First error was complaining about the password and the log file is:

INFO: Executing ASMCA

INFO: Command /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/grid/bin/asmca -silent -oui_internal -configureASM -diskString '/dev/ORACLE/ASMDISKS/*' -diskGroupName DATA -diskList /dev/ORACLE/ASMDISKS/hostx_asm0,/dev/ORACLE/ASMDISKS/hostx_asm1 -redundancy EXTERNAL

INFO: ... GenericInternalPlugIn.handleProcess() entered.

INFO: ... GenericInternalPlugIn: getting configAssistantParmas.

INFO: ... GenericInternalPlugIn: checking secretArguments.

INFO: ... GenericInternalPlugIn: starting read loop.

INFO: Read: SYS_PASSWORD_PROMPT

INFO: Processing: SYS_PASSWORD_PROMPT for argument tag -sysAsmPassword

INFO: Read: ASMSNMP_PASSWORD_PROMPT

INFO: Processing: ASMSNMP_PASSWORD_PROMPT for argument tag -asmMonitorPassword

INFO: End of argument passing to stdin

INFO: Read:

INFO: Read: Configuring ASM failed with the following message:

INFO: Read: Adding Monitor user failed. The following error occured:

INFO: Read: ORA-00922: missing or invalid option

INFO: Read:

INFO: Read:

INFO: Completed Plugin named: Automatic Storage Management Configuration Assistant

INFO: Automatic Storage Management Configuration Assistant failed.

INFO: Automatic Storage Management Configuration Assistant failed.

INFO: ConfigClient.executeToolsInAggregate action performed

INFO: Exiting ConfigClient.executeToolsInAggregate method                                          INFO: Calling event ConfigToolsExecuted

Installer raised error and quit. Because ASM configuration failed, i run” asmca” to create ASM instance. However, asmca also failed to create the instance and raised the same error.

I checked google and found the solution in the OTN forum.

https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=1016695

It was because of the ASM sys password that installer asks for. My entry was alphanumeric and this was the problem!! I tried a simple lower case password and magically got rid of this strange error.

But that was not all. This time it wasn’t able to use the ASM disks with the following errors.

ORA-15018: diskgroup cannot be created

ORA-15031: disk specification '/dev/ORACLE/ASM/hostx_asm0' matches no disks

ORA-15014: location '/dev/ORACLE/ASM/hostx_asm0' is not in the discovery set

 I was familiar with these errors. What i know was two reasons may cause this.

• Misconfigured ”asm_diskstring” parameter: If wildcard was not set correctly, this errors may occur. I tried some different discovery paths but no chance :(

• Not empty ASM disks as stated on the following doc.

“Disk Is not Discovered in ASM, Diskgroup Creation Fails with Ora-15018 Ora-15031 Ora-15014 [ID 431013.1]

Use the option FORCE of the "create diskgroup" or "alter diskgroup add disk" to enforce overriding the previous content of the disk.

If it really doesn't work, then in very last option :

Use dd to clean up the disk header of all the disks that are not discovered by the ASM instance.” 

This also didn’t work. I checked the headers and disks were all empty.

Then i remember the strange error about the ASM sys password and thought if this may be related with the entries (disk path, name etc.) that i write on the asmca screen. Maybe what i see on the screen was not same with what oracle see :)

Then decided to use silent installation on the command line to be sure (and hoping) that this is not the cause. And the result is below:

bash-3.2$ ./asmca -silent -configureASM -sysAsmPassword oracle -asmsnmpPassword oracle -diskString '/dev/ORACLE/ASM/*' -diskGroupName DATA -disk '/dev/ORACLE/ASM/hostx_asm0' -redundancy external

ASM created and started successfully.

DiskGroup DATA created successfully.