Connecting to Oracle Server From a Linux Client

[Joe Harry]

Guys,

I have an Oracle 11.x DB server installed on Windows. I have a Linux Box running Ubuntu on which I have the instant client installed. But when I try to connect to the oracle database server, I get the following error:

jothi@mycomp:~$ sqlplus hr/hr@XE

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.3.0 Production on Sun Dec 4 12:03:38 2011

Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

ERROR:
ORA-12545: Connect failed because target host or object does not exist

And my tnsnames.ora looks like:

XE =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = windowsi-pc)(PORT = 1158))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVER = DEDICATED)
      (SERVICE_NAME = XE)
    )
  )

I later even tried to change the HOST in my tnsnames.ora to the ip address. But that resulted in the following error:

jothi@mycomp:~$ sqlplus hr/hr@XE

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.3.0 Production on Sun Dec 4 12:06:12 2011

Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

ERROR:
ORA-12170: TNS:Connect timeout occurred

Any suggestions on what has gone wrong?

[Joe Harry]

Got ahead with the problem. There was a firewall blocking on the machine that runs the Oracle server. Made some firewall changes and then everything started working.