Starting ASM: ORA-29701: unable to connect to Cluster Synchronization Service

Hey all,
So, I bet you have seen this error already, as this is quite common when messing up with Cluster configuration, which DBAs love to do…. no?

Well, here is what you may be facing:

SQL> startup
ORA-01078: failure in processing system parameters
ORA-29701: unable to connect to Cluster Synchronization Service
SQL>

The error is kind of clear: Cluster Synchronization Service (CSS) is not available. So, let’s start it from ASM Cluster (or HAS).

$GRID_HOME/bin/crsctl start resource -all

Or, for Standalone:

$GRID_HOME/bin/crsctl start has

To check on status:

$GRID_HOME/bin/crsctl status resource -t

Complete example (attention to CSSD):

[root@greporasrv1 ~]# crsctl start has
CRS-4640: Oracle High Availability Services is already active
CRS-4000: Command Start failed, or completed with errors.
[root@greporasrv1 ~]# crsctl start resource -all
CRS-5702: Resource ‘ora.evmd’ is already running on ‘greporasrv1’
CRS-2501: Resource ‘ora.ons’ is disabled
CRS-2672: Attempting to start ‘ora.cssd’ on ‘greporasrv1’
CRS-2672: Attempting to start ‘ora.diskmon’ on ‘greporasrv1’
CRS-2676: Start of ‘ora.diskmon’ on ‘greporasrv1’ succeeded
CRS-2676: Start of ‘ora.cssd’ on ‘greporasrv1’ succeeded
CRS-4000: Command Start failed, or completed with errors.
[root@greporasrv1 ~]# crsctl stat res -t
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name Target State Server State details
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Local Resources
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ora.ons
OFFLINE OFFLINE greporasrv1 STABLE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cluster Resources
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ora.cssd
1 ONLINE ONLINE greporasrv1 STABLE
ora.diskmon
1 OFFLINE OFFLINE STABLE
ora.evmd
1 ONLINE ONLINE greporasrv1 STABLE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[root@greporasrv1 ~]#

Hope that worked! 😀

Oh, it didn’t? Did you changed hostname name or something? In this case, you may want to deconfig HAS and reconfigure using root.sh (part regular installation):

cd $ORACLE_HOME
./crs/install/roothas.pl -deconfig -force
./crs/install/roothas.pl -delete -force
./root.sh

Hey! Be careful with that, it might be unrecoverable. 😉