testDataSourceConnection ERROR when connecting to Oracle data source

[cognos_guru]

Hi Everyone -

We have a problem with Cognos connecting to any and every Oracle datasource.  Everything has been running smoothly for quite sometime, but last Friday the server crashed due to a power supply failure.  Ever since it's been brought back up, we haven't been able to connect to any oracle datasource through Cognos (version 8.3).  We can connect from the server using SQLPlus and all ODBC connections test successfully. 

This is the error we are getting:
QE-DEF-0285 The logon failed
QE-DEF-0323 The DSN (ODBC)/ServiceName is invalid.  Either the DSN is missing or the host is inaccessible. 
RQP-DEF-0068 Unable to connect to at least one database during a multi-datavase attach to 1 database(s) in:  testDataSourceConnection
UDA-SQL-0031 Unable to access the "testDataSourceConnection" database
UDA-SQL-0532 Data Source is not accessible
ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified



Thanks for your help!

[cognosjon]

Hi,
We occasionally get  this message when our servers have been down and appears to happen if the cognos service attempts to start up before the oracle databases have restarted.

I take it you have already tried restarting your cognos server?
I'd also check to see that the oracle database has been started. If it is started then could I suggest stopping and restarting it.

[cognos_guru]

We did restart the Cognos server, but got the same error.

We ended up rebooting the entire machine and the error went away.  Interesting you said you occasionally get it if cognos starts up before Oracle... I wonder if that is what happened.  Thanks for the tip!