Oracle Database Discussions

Hi all,

I have to allow remote connetion to an instance as sysdba. on remote server (SunOS, SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.1.0) and on oracle database server (SunOS, Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 )
Oracle database server contains many databes instances.

i tried these sql statments:

SQL> show parameter password;

NAME TYPE VALUE

remote_login_passwordfile string EXCLUSIVE



SQL> select * from v$pwfile_users;

no rows selected

i tried searching for this password file (i think it must be in $ORACLE_HOME/dbs directory) i found a weird one pwd$ORACLE_SID ( i thought is should be orapw$ORACLE_SID).
I thought since there is a password file why not trying to grant sysdba privilège to some user ( i just want to see if the password file was used). so on oracle database server (as sysdba) i tried this :
SQL> grant sysdba to XXX;
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01994: GRANT failed: password file missing or disabled

I have some question about this situation :

1/ if something went wrong when using the orawpd utility, why are we able to (start up/ shut down) this instance whithout problems (well being on oracle server of course), does the password file authentification interfere only with remote authentification as sysdba ? (sorry i don't grasp well this mechanism since i am not a DBA administrator ...)

2/ how can i do to solve this situation :)

Thanks a lot
BR
Taha