Error 1017 received logging on to the standby

If you are working in a standby environment this is a quite common error that you will see in the alert log. There are various situations when you will see this error.Although you have a latest copy of password file copied in both PRIMARY and STANDBY DB, there is a chance that you will see this error. This is a generic error that comes to oracles's mind and warns you about it.

Fetching gap sequence in thread 1, gap sequence 44212-44255
Error 1017 received logging on to the standby

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Check that the primary and standby are using a password file
and remote_login_passwordfile is set to SHARED or EXCLUSIVE,
and that the SYS password is same in the password files.
      returning error ORA-16191

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FAL[client, USER]: Error 16191 connecting to ORCL for fetching gap sequence
Archived Log entry 5 added for thread 1 sequence 44257 rlc 839361298 ID 0xa5d555eb dest 2:
Tue Jan 19 12:03:39 2013
Archived Log entry 6 added for thread 1 sequence 44260 rlc 839361298 ID 0xa5d555eb dest 2:
Tue Jan 19 12:03:41 2013
Archived Log entry 7 added for thread 1 sequence 44259 rlc 839361298 ID 0xa5d555eb dest 2:
Tue Jan 19 12:03:42 2013
RFS[5]: Opened log for thread 1 sequence 44261 dbid -1517523940 branch 839361298
Tue Jan 19 12:03:43 2013
Error 1017 received logging on to the standby

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Check that the primary and standby are using a password file
and remote_login_passwordfile is set to SHARED or EXCLUSIVE,
and that the SYS password is same in the password files.
      returning error ORA-16191

SOLUTION :

1. Copy the latest copy of PASSWORD file from PRIMARY instance to STANDBY instance and replace it with the old one. 

Usually password file is in format of  ORAPWDINSTANCENAME

example : ORAPWDORCL (where ORCL is my instance name).

2. Check if the PASSWORD FILE is set to either EXCLUSIVE mode or SHARED.

3. Test if you can connect to both PRIM and STANDBY as SYSDBA using password.

Note :

IF you don't know the password for SYS, you can recreate password file using this link.

How to create new password file.