TNS-01189: The listener could not authenticate the user

I have two Oracle servers, old and new. The plan is to swap their IP addresses to use the new Oracle. After swapped the IP addresses, the Listener was not working.

The error was:

===========

[root@171db ~]# su - oracle

[oracle@171db ~]$ lsnrctl status

LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.2.0.2.0 - Production on 31-MAY-2013 10:49:58

Copyright (c) 1991, 2010, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=171db)(PORT=1521)))

TNS-01189: The listener could not authenticate the user

Below is the explanation from the official website about this error code TNS-01189

==============================================================

TNS-01189: The listener could not authenticate the user

Cause: The user attempted to issue a privileged administrative command, but

could not be successfully authenticated by the listener using the local OS

authentication mechanism. This may occur due to one of the following reasons:

1. The user is running a version of LSNRCTL that is lower than the version of the

listener.

2. The user is attempting to administer the listener from a remote node.

3. The listener could not obtain the system resources needed to perform. the

authentication.

4. The local network connection between the listener and LSNRCTL was

terminated unexpectedly during authentication message exchange, such as if

LSNRCTL program was suddenly aborted.

5. The communication between the listener and LSNRCTL is being intercepted by

a malicious user.

6. The software that the user is running is not following the authentication

protocol, indicating a malicious user.

Action: Make sure that administrative commands are issued using the LSNRCTL

tool that is of a version equal or greater than the version of the listener, and that

the tool and the listener are running on the same node. You can issue the

VERSION command to find out the version of the listener. If a malicious user is

suspected, use the information provided in the listener log file to determine the

source and nature of the requests. Enable listener tracing for more information. If

the error persists, contact Oracle Support Services.

Solution

=======

Reason No.4 explained the current situation.

The solution is to check /etc/hosts. Because the IP has been swapped from 192.168.164.80 to 192.168.164.87 for the new Oracle server.

Here is the original file:

[root@new-oracle ~]# vi /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4

::1         localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6

192.168.164.80  new-oracle

The above IP needs to be updated to 192.168.164.87. After updated the file and start the Listener again, problem solved.

[oracle@new-oracle admin]$ lsnrctl start