BRCONNECT nightmares with RAC/ASM

Objective:

I am trying to get brconnect to run a check on a RAC system.  I am logged in on the RAC as <sid>arm

Problem:

1. "brconnect -u / -c -f check" fails with a confusing miasma of errors, but basically "connect to instance PRD1 failed"
2. "brconnect -u /@PRD -c -f check" fails with "CONNECT /@PRD IN SYSOPER MODE"  login denied.
3. "brconnect - u system/password@PRD -c -f check" runs successfully.
4. "brconnect - u system/password@PRD -c -f check" fails like case 1 fails

Details:

-rwsrwsr--. 1 oracle oinstall 10045572 Sep  5 03:44 brarchive

-rwsrwsr--. 1 oracle oinstall 10130301 Sep  5 03:44 brbackup

-rwsrwsr--. 1 oracle oinstall 12150398 Sep  5 03:44 brconnect

-rwsrwsr--. 1 oracle oinstall 10600820 Sep  5 03:44 brrecover

-rwsrwsr--. 1 oracle oinstall  6230300 Sep  5 03:38 brrestore

-rwsrwsr--. 1 oracle oinstall 12624124 Sep  5 03:44 brspace

-rwxr-xr-x. 1 oracle oinstall  6841351 Sep  5 03:38 brtools

My analysis:

I see two problems:

• It works as "system/password@SID" but not as "-u /@SID" so there is a problem with user <sid>arm or ops$<sid>adm.
• It works as "system/password@SID" but not as "system/password" so there is a problem with sqlnet.ora/tnsnames.ora.

This may or may not be correct - I am just trying to prove that I am making an effort here.

I have monkeyed around with sqlnet.ora and tnsnames.ora.

Attached files:

• tnsnames_world.txt contains tnsnames.world and sqlnet.world as the world-view versions,
• tnsnames_noworld.txt contains tnsnames.noworld and sqlnet.noworld as the "unworlded" versions.

I am clearly doing something totally bozo here but I cannot work out what it is.  If you figure it out, you may start your post with "You idiot!"  Otherwise please be nice...

Thanks for your help,

Russ