This argument sets the name of the password file being created. This argument is mandatory.
If you specify a location on an Oracle ASM disk group, then the database password file is shared automatically among the nodes in the cluster. When you use an Oracle ASM disk group to store the password file, and you are not using Oracle Managed Files, you must specify the name of the password file, including its full path. The full path is not required if you are using Oracle Managed Files.
If you do not specify a location on an Oracle ASM disk group, then the file name required for the password file is operating system specific. Some operating systems require the password file to adhere to a specific format and be located in a specific directory. Other operating systems allow the use of environment variables to specify the name and location of the password file.
For example, for a database instance with the SID orcldw, the password file must be named orapworcldw on Linux and PWDorcldw.ora on Windows.
In an Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) environment on a platform that requires an environment variable to be set to the path of the password file, the environment variable for each instance must point to the same password file.
For a policy-managed Oracle RAC database or an Oracle RAC One Node database with ORACLE_SID of the form db_unique_name_n, where n is a number, the password file is searched for first using ORACLE_BASE/dbs/orapwsid_prefix or ORACLE_BASE\database\PWDsid_prefix.ora. The sid_prefix (the first 8 characters of the database name) is used to locate the password file.
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