ORA-01031: insufficient privileges connecting to standby I configured a standby database and it worked for a while, but now I noticed that the redo logs thread on standby is far behind the primary. After researching alert log and trace files, I figured out that there is a problem with connection to the standby server.

When I type on the primary server:

sqlplus sys/manager@TESTSTAN as sysdba


The output is:

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Fri Jan 29 13:36:17 2016

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

ERROR: ORA-01031: insufficient privileges


But I am able to connect from the standby to the primary:

[oravis@standbysrv bin]$ sqlplus sys/manager@TESTPROD as sysdba
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Fri Jan 29 13:46:18 2016

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to an idle instance.

SQL&gt; startup mount
ORACLE instance started.

Total System Global Area  422670336 bytes
Fixed Size          1336960 bytes
Variable Size         335546752 bytes
Database Buffers       79691776 bytes
Redo Buffers            6094848 bytes
Database mounted.
SQL&gt; select instance_name, status from v$instance;

INSTANCE_NAME    STATUS
---------------- ------------
testprod     MOUNTED


Password file the same on both hosts. Also, I've recreated it for a few times and this didn't help. remote_login_passwordfile parameter is exclusive on both servers.

listener.ora on the standby

    SID_LIST_LISTENER = 
    (SID_LIST = 
     (SID_DESC =
        (GLOBAL_DBNAME = teststan)
        (ORACLE_HOME = /u01/app/oravis/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1)
        (SID_NAME = test) ) )

    LISTENER =
     (DESCRIPTION_LIST =
     (DESCRIPTION =
     (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = standbysrv)(PORT = 1521))
     ) )
    DYNAMIC_REGISTRATION_LISTENER=off


tnsnames.ora on the primary:

TESTSTAN =
 (DESCRIPTION =
 (ADDRESS_LIST = (ADDRESS =
         (PROTOCOL = TCP)
         (HOST = standbysrv)
         (PORT = 1521)) )
 (CONNECT_DATA = (SERVICE_NAME = teststan) ) 
 )

TESTPROD =
 (DESCRIPTION =
 (ADDRESS_LIST =
 (ADDRESS =
         (PROTOCOL = TCP)
         (HOST = oratest)
         (PORT = 1521)) )
 (CONNECT_DATA =
         (SID = test)
         (SERVICE_NAME = testprod)
 ) )
According to the output of the command ps -ef|grep pmon which has shows that the instance name of the standby database is teststan.


[oravis@standbysrv ~]$ ps -ef|grep pmon oravis 2749 1 0 16:02 ? 00:00:00 ora_pmon_teststan oravis 2825 2697 0 16:03 pts/0 00:00:00 grep pmon


But in the description of listener on standby database, SID_NAME is defined as 'test'. 

The Oracle tries to authenticate sys user using password file(orapwtest) which has never existed. 
So set the SID_NAME parameter on listener.ora file on standby site to 'teststan'.