A long time ago, back with SQL*Net v1, the oratab file was used to identify the ORACLE_HOME location of a given SID.

These days, the file is used by a number of items:

1) The oraenv/coraenv (using the dbhome script) environment setup scripts
2) The standard dbstart/dbshut scripts (looks at the third field in ORATAB to determine whether to start/stop that DB)
3) OUI uses oratab to identify pre-Oracle 8i Oracle Homes
4) OEM uses it during the discovery process

I am sure there are other things it may be used for, but there is no specific requirement for having an oratab if you can live without the functionality of the items above.

Regards,

Paul

*********** ORIGINAL MESSAGE ***********

On 10/09/2004 at 1:45 PM Johnson Shaunn wrote:

Silly question:

I've inherited a few new servers (9.2.0.x on RedHat AS 2.1)
and I want to add them to the Enterprise Manager Console.
When I tried, they failed and I went to figure out why.

Starting with the agentctl and then with the error log that it
references, the message I get says that it can't find the emtab
file.

I can't find the oratab file on the machines, either.

My question is - how important *are* those files? The machine
works and the DBes are up and working ... so, why would someone
*not* put those in place.

Thanks!

-X


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