ORA-24324: service handle not initialized when shutting down database.

When we try to SHUTDOWN NORMAL/IMMEDIATE, it fails with the below errors.

ORA-24324: service handle not initialized
ORA-24323: value not allowed
ORA-01090: shutdown in progress - connection is not permitted 

Cause: for this is that the Background processes are hanging/not stared correctly during the previous startup of this database. Hence the smeaphores and shared memory segements are not getting detached properly now during shutdown.

Solution

1. Verify that there are no background processes owned by "oracle" , if there are kill them
$ ps -ef | grep ora_ | grep $ORACLE_SID

2. remove shared memory and semaphores:
A) checking for shared memory and semaphores
$ ipcs -mt (if there is anything owned by oracle remove it)
$ ipcrm -m [ID] (to remove it)

B) checking and removing semaphores
$ ipcs -sbt (if there is anything owned by oracle remove it)
$ ipcrm -s [ID] (to remove it)

C) remove sga and lk file
$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/dbs
$ rm sgadef<SID>.dbf (removing sga file)
$ORACLE_HOME/dbs/lk<sid> (removing lk... flies)

D) try to bring up oracle one step at a time:
$ sqlplus /nolog
> startup nomount pfile = ...[path]
> alter database mount;
> alter database open;