Auto Shutdown of Oracle Needs Lock File in /Var/Lock/Subsys

[Garris, Nicole]

This problem is resolved but I'm not clear why/how. I installed Oracle
Standard 10.2 on Red Hat Advanced Server 4. When rebooting the server,
automatic startup of Oracle works, but automatic shutdown does not after
following instructions in Oracle Database Administrator's Reference 10g
Release 2 for UNIX-Based Operating Systems, section 2.2.2. Turns out
that the following command(s) have to be added to the Oracle startup
script /etc/rc.d/init.d/dbora to create a file in /var/lock/subsys.

 

       su - $ORA_OWNER -c $ORACLE_HOME

        touch /var/lock/subsys/dbora

 

Can anyone explain to a Linux newbie why the file has to be added to
that folder and how the Linux start/stop procedure uses it? Thanks!