ORA-65086: cannot open/close the pluggable database

Problem:

Tried to open the pluggable database and got the error:

SQL> alter pluggable database PDB11 open;
alter pluggable database PDB11 open
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-65086: cannot open/close the pluggable database

Reason:

I have run unplug database before so database status was UNPLUGGED.

SQL> col PDB_NAME for a15
SQL> set linesize 800
SQL> select pdb_name,status from dba_pdbs;

PDB_NAME	STATUS
--------------- ----------
PDB11		UNPLUGGED
PDB$SEED	NORMAL
PDB12		NORMAL
PDB13		NORMAL

Solution:

To plug the database back to the container with the same name, first you need to drop it:

SQL> drop pluggable database PDB11 keep datafiles;

SQL> create pluggable database PDB11 using '/u01/app/oracle/myxml/PDB11.xml' nocopy tempfile reuse;

Check the status again:

SQL> col PDB_NAME for a15
SQL> set linesize 800
SQL> select pdb_name,status from dba_pdbs;

PDB_NAME	STATUS
--------------- ----------
PDB$SEED	NORMAL
PDB12		NORMAL
PDB13		NORMAL
PDB11		NEW

Open the database and make sure status became NORMAL:

SQL> alter pluggable database PDB11 open;

SQL> select pdb_name,status from dba_pdbs;

--------------- ----------
PDB$SEED	NORMAL
PDB12		NORMAL
PDB13		NORMAL
PDB11		NORMAL