On a 3-node RAC database, one of the instance was not coming up, throwing the below error

$ srvctl start instance -d test_prm -i test1 -o open
PRKP-1001 : Error starting instance test1 on node nn4040
CRS-0215: Could not start resource 'ora.test_prm.test1.inst'.

I was asked to look into it, so the first thing i tried was to check whether the instance comes up using startup command from sqlplus and it started.So, it was time to check the database configuration stored in the OCR, using srvctl config.

$ srvctl config database -d test_prm -a
nn4040 test1 /u01/app/oracle/product/rdbms/10205
nn4041 test2 /u01/app/oracle/product/rdbms/10205
nn4042 test3 /u01/app/oracle/product/rdbms/10205
DB_UNIQUE_NAME: test_prm
DB_NAME: null
ORACLE_HOME: /u01/app/oracle/product/rdbms/10205
SPFILE: null
DOMAIN: null
DB_ROLE: null
START_OPTIONS: open
POLICY:  AUTOMATIC
ENABLE FLAG: DB ENABLED

So, as per the output of OCR configuration “SPFILE: null” , and that was the reason the instance was not coming up using srvctl start instance command.
Modified the configuration and the started up the instance 🙂

$ srvctl modify database -d test_prm -p '/u01/oraadmin/test/admin/spfile/spfiletest.ora' -s open
$srvctl config database -d test_prm -a
nn4040 test1 /u01/app/oracle/product/rdbms/10205
nn4041 test2 /u01/app/oracle/product/rdbms/10205
nn4042 test3 /u01/app/oracle/product/rdbms/10205
DB_UNIQUE_NAME: test_prm
DB_NAME: null
ORACLE_HOME: /u01/app/oracle/product/rdbms/10205
SPFILE: /u01/oraadmin/test/admin/spfile/spfiletest.ora
DOMAIN: null
DB_ROLE: null
START_OPTIONS: open
POLICY:  AUTOMATIC
ENABLE FLAG: DB ENABLED

$ srvctl start instance -d test_prm -i test1 -o open
$ sqlplus / as sysdba
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production on Tue Mar 17 22:02:24 2011
Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.5.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Data Mining
and Real Application Testing options
[email protected] >

Enjoy 🙂