ORA-15081: failed to submit an I/O operation to a disk

Cause:

The problem occurred every time sqlplus was launched by the 'root' OS user, as part of running some database monitoring tasks/queries.

[root@db ~]# export ORACLE_SID=db1

[root@db ~]# export ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/product/11.2.0.3

[root@db ~]# $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.3.0 Production on Mon Jul 11 10:26:43 2016

Enter user-name: enazmmo

Enter password:

ERROR:

ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 1

ORA-01115: IO error reading block from file (block # )

ORA-01110: data file 1: '+DATA/db1_dg/datafile/system.263.844443823'

ORA-15081: failed to submit an I/O operation to a disk

In the alert log file:

Errors in file /opt/oracle/diag/rdbms/db1_dg/db1/trace/db1_ora_2577.trc:

ORA-15186: ASMLIB error function = [asm_init], error = [18446744073709551611], mesg = [Driver not installed]

ERROR: error ORA-15186 caught in ASM I/O path

Solution:

Do not launch sqlplus as the 'root' user. Instead log to the server as the Oracle software owner, before launching sqlplus.