Re: Oracle and Unix Passwords ?

jimm_at_fcs.wa.gov.au (Jim McGrady) wrote:

>Hi all
>
>Can someone please tell me how to make Oracle 7 validate users against its Unix hosts's
>password database rather than Oracle's own internal user database ?
>
>Thanks
>
>Jim McGrady
>

When you create the user, instead of specifying a password, specify "IDENTIFIED EXTERNALLY". In your init file there's a parameter called OS_AUTHENT_PREFIX. Whatever users you want verified by the OS must have this prefix in front of the oracle user name. The default is "OPS$" but I normally set it to "". You'll probably also want to set "REMOTE_OS_AUTHENT = TRUE". For example, if you have a unix user named "oracle", and you want to allow that user to log into the database without specifying an oracle password, you'd create it like this:

CREATE USER ops$oracle

	IDENTIFIED EXTERNALLY
	TEMPORARY TABLESPACE your_temp_ts
	DEFAULT TABLESPACE your_default_ts

If you opt to set OS_AUTHENT_PREFIX="", then elminate the ops$ prefix from the username too.

At this point you can log into unix as "oracle", and type "sqlplus /" to get into the database.

Be aware though that these users cannot log into the database from a client on an OS that doesn't verify users with a password (i.e. no Windows or DOS clients can use these usernames).

--
Chuck Hamilton
chuckh_at_dvol.com

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