In the institution that I work, we have a Student Information System. The is powered by Linux RedHat Advance Server. The system is configured in such a way that separate server machines for Apache webserver and Oracle database server. This way public traffic is limited to the webserver only and database access are from internal access only.

There are times that I need to restart or do something on the remote Oracle database or Apache webserver. My office is located far from the server location and this situation calls for using a program like free Putty or Bitvise to connect remotely from a Windows XP machine. I connect to the remote server via SSH (Secure Shell) connection.

Once authenticated I do the stuff I have to do on a Linux command line environment.

To restart the database, one need to login as the operating system user that was used to install and create database
#su - oracle

Oracle have two parts Oracle Instance (memory part) and another Oracle Database

Open sqlplus without logging
#sqlplus /nolog

Connect to Oracle Instance
#connect /as sysdba

Once connected startup the Oracle Database
#startup

Exit Sqlplus
#exit

Run the database listener to allow connection to the database
#lsnrctl start

After firing up the database listener then the Oracle database is now ready for use.