ORA-01033: ORACLE initialization or shutdown in progress

You will see this error very often during data guard setup, the main reason for this error is the password files are not copied to from primary to standby.

ORA-01033: ORACLE initialization or shutdown in progress.
Cause: An attempt was made to log on while Oracle is being started up or shutdown.
Action: Wait a few minutes. Then retry the operation 

If you don’t have any password file then create one using below command on primary and copy to standby node.

$orapwd file=orapwDG password=xxxxxx

In case of RAC, the password file might be on Primary cluster DB which was stored in ASM, but on standby you have copied the password file to $ORACLE_HOME/dbs

Run below commands to on both primary and standby

For ex:- On Primary

$ srvctl config database -d DG 

Database unique name: DG
Database name: DG
Oracle home: /home/oracle/product/12.2.0.1/dbhome_1
Oracle user: oracle
Spfile: +DISK1/DG/ parameterfile/spfileDG.ora
Password file: +DISK1/DG/ parameterfile/pwdDG

For ex:- On standby
$ srvctl config database -d DG_std
Database unique name: DG_std
Database name: DG
Oracle home: /home/oracle/product/12.2.0.1/dbhome_1
Oracle user: oracle
Spfile: +DISK1/DG/ parameterfile/spfileDG.ora
Password file: /home/oracle/product/12.2.0.1/dbhome_1/dbs/orapwDG

Also users see this error on normal database. There are many possible reasons for this error.
1. You may get this error if Database might not opened
2. Startup/shutdown is in the middle and hung up.
3. If you are trying to connect to wrong database
4. Database might be in down for recovery

Please make sure you check below

1. If the database is not opened then use command “alter database open” .
2. Check target DB is in the middle of startup or shutdown as system is very busy or has some issues. You need to verity alert.log to find out the real issue.
3. Verify all environment variable are set correct and In case if DB is down startup the database
4. In case if user doing recovery and not successful and below steps will help to recover the DB
SQL> startup mount
ORACLE Instance started
SQL> recover database
Media recovery complete
SQL> alter database open;
Database altered

Regards

Satishbabu Gunukula, Oracle ACE

https://oracleracexpert.com