Mark Wagner's Oracle on Linux Site

The warning is provided in 2 cases. If the ORACLE_SID is not set properly or when the ASM instance is not running.

Before Oracle 11g the user received an error which was indicated that the environment was wrong. In Oracle 11g a must beter message is provide, and there are situations where you can use ASMCMD even when the ASM instance is not started or the ORACLE_SID is not set properly.

So depending on the situation the message can be correct. If this is not wanted, validate if the ASM instance is running and/or ORACLE_SID is set correctly.

When using ASMCMD, if ASM instance is running, v$ views are used to retrieve the information requested. If the ASM instance is down, the diskheader is read to provide the requested information when using ASMCMD.

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm createdisk VOL1 /dev/xvdb1
Marking disk "/dev/xvdb1" as an ASM disk: asmtool: Device "/dev/xvdb1" is not
a partition
                                                           [FAILED]

Workaround: Run the asmtool command with the -a force=yes parameter to ignore the partition check, for example

# asmtool -C -l /dev/oracleasm -n VOL1 -s /dev/xvdb1 -a force=yes
/etc/init.d/oracleasm scandisks

The oracleasm scandisks command fixes permissions once the disk is created.