I tried to get to work this morning, but tora wouldn't connect to oracle for some reason, saying the listener wasn't running.

I went in, tried restarting the listener, but that didn't work. I tried restarting the database after that, and it seemed that something funny had gone on there too.

I was able to shut the database down, but then I couldn't start it again, it was complaining that it couldn't find the init file for the instance.

I looked, and I couldn't find it either. In desperation, I decided to try copying the default init file, and renaming it to match the Oracle SID.

I modified the database name in it, to match the SID, and then I tried to start the database.

I was quite surprised to find that it actually started up.

I was then able to restart the listener again. It still didn't look like it was right though.

I tried to connect with tora again, and still received an error, though this time it was an error resolving the service name.

I wondered if something had happened to the tnsnames.ora file, so I checked it, but it looked fine.

I went back, and had one more go at connecting with tora, and it connected.

I don't know what that was, maybe it takes a little while for the listener to start up properly.