[INS-06101] IP address of localhost could not be determined.

When installing an Oracle database you might come across the following error; "". This error message looks quite simple to resolve and when you do a search on the web you will find numerous posts and discussions that go into detail on this subject. Most of the discussions go around the fact that you will have to check your /etc/hosts file for an entry of localhost.

However, in some cases there are reports of people who do have a line stating localhost and they can resolve localhost. The issue with this error message is that it is not precise. What it is doing is that it is looking to resolve your localhost name and NOT localhost. Meaning, if you named your machine for example testserver the installation process is not trying to resolve localhost it is trying to resolve testserver.

meaning, if you try to debug it and do a ping localhost you will get a positive result, however if you do a ping testserver you most likely will not get a positive result. When encountering a INS-06101 error this might be the first thing to check,