Oracle - What TNS Names file am I using?

Question

Sometimes I get Oracle connection problems because I can\'t figure out which tnsnames.ora file my database client is using.

What\'s the best way to figure this out?

Answer 1

For linux:

$ strace sqlplus -L scott/tiger@orcl 2>&1| grep -i 'open.*tnsnames.ora'

shows something like this:

open("/opt/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/network/admin/tnsnames.ora",O_RDONLY)=7

Changing to

$ strace sqlplus -L scott/tiger@orcl 2>&1| grep -i 'tnsnames.ora'

will show all the file paths that are failing.