MacLochlainns Weblog

It’s always interesting when you get in a hurry, have multiple terminal sessions open and type the wrong thing in the wrong terminal session. This is especially true when working with the Oracle database.

In this case, it was implementing a Docker Container of Oracle Database 18c on macOS. I typed the following to connect as the privileged system user:

sqlplus system/cangetin

It generated the following error stack:

[student@localhost ~]$ sqlplus system/cangetin
 
SQL*Plus: Release 18.0.0.0.0 - Production on Tue Sep 15 15:02:30 2020
Version 18.4.0.0.0
 
Copyright (c) 1982, 2018, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
 
ERROR:
ORA-27140: attach to post/wait facility failed
ORA-27300: OS system dependent operation:invalid_egid failed with status: 1
ORA-27301: OS failure message: Operation not permitted
ORA-27302: failure occurred at: skgpwinit6
ORA-27303: additional information: startup egid = 54321 (oinstall), current
egid = 54322 (dba)

Really, that’s suppose to help an end-user or even an average DBA? Shouldn’t it really return an error that says the OS user isn’t the owner of the database? Naturally, there’s nothing wrong with connecting as the system privileged user when you’re OS account is not the owner provided you use the network service identifier, like

sqlplus system/cangetin@xe

It works fine with the xe network service identifier. I hope this helps anybody confused by the error stack.