ORA-00205: error in identifying control file, check alert log for more info

Question

I am newly installing Oracle XE database on Ubuntu by following these steps:

Downloaded latest rpm file for Oracle XE and ran below commands to install the database:

sudo apt-get install alien
alien oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm
dpkg -i oracle-xe_11.2.0-2_amd64.deb

Then I made sure that I have permissions to /u01/ and also it is under dba group.

Now when I am trying to start the database then I am getting issues:

$ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Wed Aug 13 15:33:51 2014
Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
Connected to an idle instance.

SQL> start
SP2-1506: START, @ or @@ command has no arguments

SQL> startup
ORA-01078: failure in processing system parameters
LRM-00109: could not open parameter file '/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/dbs/initXE.ora'

I see that I don't have the file initXE.ora and I have only init.ora as show here:

$ ls /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/dbs/
init.ora

Update:

I copied init.ora file and renamed it to initXE.ora file and updated the parameters in it so they point to valid directories, now when I start my database then I am getting error as:

SQL> startup
ORACLE instance started.

Total System Global Area 1068937216 bytes
Fixed Size          2233344 bytes
Variable Size         616565760 bytes
Database Buffers      444596224 bytes
Redo Buffers            5541888 bytes
ORA-00205: error in identifying control file, check alert log for more info

Answer 1

You are installing on an unsupported operating system and something could go wrong.

The file initSID.ora, where SID is the instance name (XE in your case), is the initialization parameter file (pfile) which Oracle uses when instance starts to load its runtime settings specified by database administrator.

For some reason the installation process was not successful, and you end up with the default pfile named init.ora.

On startup Oracle instance reads initialization parameters from the following files in the order of appearance

1. spfileSID.ora
2. spfile.ora
3. initSID.ora

where the first two being binary counterparts of pfiles and are called server parameter files (spfiles), because they should reside on the server side in contrast to pfiles which can be on any side.

You can copy init.ora to initXE.ora and set appropriate parameters just to check if your instance starts.

However you would better try reinstalling your database checking the messages shown in the output during installation to see if something goes wrong or using supported OS.