Oracle Restart: WARNING: unknown state for ASM password file location resource, Return Value: 3

Symptoms:

When Oracle restart upgraded from 11.2 to 12.1.0.2, ASM password file was not generated, and the following message was shown in the alert_+ASM.log. But from 12.1.0.1 upgrade to 12.1.0.2, there is no such issue.

alert_+ASM.log

WARNING: unknown state for ASM password file location resource, Return Value: 3

Wed Oct 26 13:44:13 2016

WARNING: unknown state for ASM password file location resource, Return Value: 3

Wed Oct 26 13:44:13 2016

WARNING: unknown state for ASM password file location resource, Return Value: 3

Wed Oct 26 13:59:13 2016

WARNING: unknown state for ASM password file location resource, Return Value: 3

After upgrade, when execute below command got below errors:

[grid@testdb ~]$ /opt/grid/product/12.1.0.2/bin/srvctl config asm

ASM home: <CRS home>

PRCA-1057 : Failed to retrieve the password file location used by ASM asm

PRCR-1097 : Resource attribute not found: PWFILE

Cause:

From 12.1 onwards ASM instance has a attribute called PWFILE(password file). Password file for ASM is not available in 11.2.

Solution:

This issue is discussed in unpublished bug 19449701 and it is still being investigated and development suggested for now to follow below workaround and the issue will be fixed in future release.

Workaround:

Ignore the warnings.

(or)

Recreate ora.asm resource with -pwfile option to eliminate these warnings. Please note, you should use below workaround only on Oracle Restart environment but not on RAC.

$ crsctl stop resource -all

$ srvctl remove asm -force

$ srvctl add asm -listener <listener> -spfile <spfile> -pwfile <orapwasm> -diskstring <path>