If you need to install some components in your Oracle database as sys, you could be in for a surprise. You can have different passwords in your password file (in $ORACLE_HOME/dbs) and inside the database. To make sure that the right one is used, perform the following using the role “sys as sysdba” in sqlplus directly on the database server:
sql> alter user sys identified by yourpasswordhere;
This problem could occur if you use the orapwd utility to create a new password for your instance *and* set it to something different than what you have inside of the database. I have seen it several times during migrations.
