Missing Password Files

I don't usually log in as SYSDBA for normal activities. I prefer to login as the main EBS application user most of the time. However, when trying to login from SQLPLUSW.exe on my local machine, once I specified "as sysdba" - I would receive this:

ERROR:

ORA-01031: insufficient privileges

At this point I would always ssh into a terminal session directly to the server and logon with:

./sqlplus / as sysdba

Later I would notice that:

SQL> show parameter password;

NAME     TYPE VALUE

------------------------------------ ----------- ------------------------------

remote_login_passwordfile     string EXCLUSIVE

But when I would query:

SQL> select * from v$pwfile_users;

no rows selected

So, maybe I just need to add a user to the pw file?

SQL> create user my_temp identified by my_temp;

User created.

SQL> grant sysdba to my_temp;

grant sysdba to my_temp

*

ERROR at line 1:

ORA-01994: GRANT failed: password file missing or disabled

When looking at: $ORACLE_HOME/dbs, I did not see any orapwd<SID> file so I decided to try and create one (in Test) using:

ORACLE_HOME/bin/orapwd file=orapworadev1 password=<password>  entries=5

Once I did this, I was able to:

SQL> select * from v$pwfile_users;

USERNAME       SYSDB SYSOP

------------------------------ ----- -----

SYS       TRUE  TRUE

and log into the database with the SYSDBA privilege remotely.