I installed Oracle 8.1.7 on a sparc system running Solaris 8. The install went fine. I was able to run sqlplus and even populate the database. After rebooting I started the listener and got a message back saying it started successfully. Now when I go to run sqlplus and put in the login credentials I get the following error:

ERROR:
ORA-01034: Oracle not available
ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist
SVR4 Error: 2: No such file or directory

I checked all my environment variables and they are set. I placed them in my .profile file so they are set and exported automatically. I even checked the /etc/system file to make sure there were no errors in my shared memory parameters. I am stumped here. I have been online looking for answers to include this site. I have tried many solutions that worked for others but will not work in my situation.

Thanks in advance for the help.

It sounds as though the Oracle processes for your database are not running.

You can check by running ps -ef|grep ora_

Assuming you have a user called oracle
Try:
su - oracle
echo $ORACLE_SID - should be set to your database name
sqlplus '/ as sysdba'

startup normal
exit

ORACLE_SID is set as my database name. I ran that command as oracle user and got "insuffecient privileges" then it prompted for a username and password. I put in the credentials and I got the same error as before:
ERROR:
ORA-01034: Oracle not available
ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist
SVR4 Error: 2: No such file or directory

I know the password is correct because it worked fine before I rebooted the system. I do believe the database is not starting up. After the initial install everything worked fine. After I rebooted looks like the database did not start back up.

when I run dbstart it provides the following output:
# dbstart

Oracle Server Manager Release 3.1.7.0.0 - Production

Copyright (c) 1997, 1999, Oracle Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Oracle8i Enterprise Edition Release 8.1.7.0.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning option
JServer Release 8.1.7.0.0 - 64bit Production

SVRMGR> Password:
Password:
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges
SVRMGR> ORA-01031: insufficient privileges
SVRMGR>
Server Manager complete.

Database "kigsys" warm started.

It says the database is started but I get the same sqlplus error. Looks like a bad password fro svrmgrl. When I run svrmgrl and try to connect with the system login I get same error I get when I try to login to sqlplus.

Okay I got it working.

My orapw<sid> file was missing that holds my password for svrmgrl utility. I corrected that. Ran svrmgrl.
connect internal
entered the password
and ran startup
now I can connect to sqlplus with the default system password
thanks for the help