ORA- 01157 / Cant connect to database
- by Tom
Hi everyone, this is a follow up from this question.
Let me start by saying that i am NOT a DBA, so i'm really really lost with this.
A few weeks ago, we lost contact with one of our SID'S.
All the other services are working, but this one in particular is not.
What we got was this message when trying to connect
  ORA-01033: ORACLE initialization or
  shutdown in progress
An attempt to alter database open ended up in
ORA-01157: cannot identify/lock data file 6 - see DBWR trace file
ORA-01110: data file 6: '/u01/app/oracle/oradata/xxx/xxx_data.dbf'
I tried to shutdown / restart the database, but got this message.
Total System Global Area  566231040 bytes
Fixed Size                  1220604 bytes
Variable Size             117440516 bytes
Database Buffers          444596224 bytes
Redo Buffers                2973696 bytes
Database mounted.
ORA-01157: cannot identify/lock data file 6 - see DBWR trace file
ORA-01110: data file 6: '/u01/app/oracle/oradata/xxx/xxx_data.dbf'
When all continued the same, I erased the dbf files (rm xxx_data.dbf xxx_index.dbf), and recreated them using touch xxx_data.dbf.
I also tried to recreate the tablespaces using
`CREATE TABLESPACE DATA 
DATAFILE XXX_DATA.DBF`
and got 
Database not open
As I said, i don't know how bad this is, or how far i'm from gaining access to my database (well, to this SID at least, the others are working).
I would imagine that a last resource would be to throw everything away, and recreating it, but I don't know how to, and I was hoping there's a less destructive solution.
Any help will be greatly appreciated .
Thanks in advance.