Troubleshooting Error "could not open parameter file init.ora.rename" During Provision (KBA1106)

Issue

A Oracle virtual database (VDB) provision job fails with an error similar to the following:

#####DELPHIX_START_ERROR#####
ERROR :
ERROR : SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.4.0 Production on Thu Jul 21 15:19:50 2016
ERROR :
ERROR : Copyright (c) 1982, 2013, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
ERROR :
ERROR : Connected to an idle instance.
ERROR :
ERROR : SQL> LRM-00109: could not open parameter file '/mnt/provision/vdb1/datafile/init.ora.rename'
ERROR : ORA-01078: failure in processing system parameters
ERROR : SQL> Disconnected
#####DELPHIX_END_ERROR#####

The error indicates that the database was unable to open the initialisation file used to mount the database in order to rename the datafiles as part of the provision.

Troubleshooting

There are a number of possible causes for this error.

The first step should be to confirm that all target host requirements have been met. This can be found in the Delphix Documentation relevant to the version of engine in use. For version 5.0, this is located at Requirements for Oracle Hosts and Databases.
Confirm the OS group name that is mapped to the Oracle OSDBA group. This should be assigned as the Delphix OS user's primary group. The group name should be listed in the $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib/config.c file under SS_DBA_GRP or within an installActions log file under the Oracle Inventory directory specified in /etc/oraInst.loc. In the example below, the OSDBA group is mapped to OS group 'dba'.

> grep inventory_loc /etc/oraInst.loc
inventory_loc=/u01/app/oraInventory

> cat /u01/app/oraInventory/logs/installActions2015-05-15_05-18-44PM.log
...
INFO: INFO: OSDBA = dba
INFO: INFO: OSOPER = oper
INFO: INFO: OSBACKUP = backupdba

If DNS is configured on the Delphix engine, ensure that the DNS servers are reachable by the engine and are not blocked by firewalls, etc. If the DNS servers cannot be reached from the Delphix engine, name lookups and reverse name lookups will time out, which may, in turn, cause the NFS filesystem mount operations to time out.