$ su oracle $ sqlplus / as sysdba CREATE USER odb_test IDENTIFIED BY odb_test DEFAULT TABLESPACE users TEMPORARY TABLESPACE temp; GRANT CREATE TABLE, CREATE SEQUENCE, CREATE TRIGGER, CREATE SESSION, UNLIMITED TABLESPACE TO odb_test; ======= If you are getting "ORA-12516: TNS:listener could not find available handler with matching protocol stack" (this seems to be the case with 10.2 XE), you will need to increase the number of connections/processes: col name format A30 col value format A30 select name, value from v$parameter where name in ('processes','sessions'); alter system set processes=300 scope=spfile; alter system set sessions=300 scope=spfile; Then restart the database (via init.d). ======= If running an OCI-based client under valgrind you get "ORA-12546: TNS: permission denied", then you need to set the TWO_TASK environment variable: export TWO_TASK= For example: export TWO_TASK=xe