title: Trying to connect internally to Oracle, getting an idle instance?
body: <p>So I have an Oracle instance, and I know it's running on this system, I've su'd to the oracle user, and I'm trying to connect using "/ as sysdba".  However, when I do connect, it says the instance is idle.  I know the database is up and opened, because my application's talking to it.  My paths (ORACLE_HOME, etc.) might be incorrect: any idea which incorrect setting might result in this?</p>
  
  <pre><code>% sqlplus "/ as sysdba"
  
  SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Production on Mon Dec 8 09:23:22 2008
  
  Copyright (c) 1982, 2006, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.
  
  Connected to an idle instance.
  
  09:23:22 SQL&gt; Disconnected
  
  % ps -ef | grep smon
   oracle  6961     1   0   Nov 05 ?           1:24 ora_smon_ORA003
  %
  </code></pre>