Re: [Q] about hiding command line password in UNIX

In article <351ACB29.5212_at_cns.eds.com>,
  beggers_at_cns.eds.com wrote:
[Solving password problems]
> The problem with doing this is that you can see the user's environment
> variables dbuser, dbpasswd by typing
>
> /usr/ucb/ps -auxwwe
>
> (at least on Sun Solaris). I believe any BSD version of ps
> will do this.

It's okay to use shell variables; what you must not do is export the password variable, because if you do it'll show up visibly in the environment of the shell's child processes (sqlplus, for example).

> #! /bin/sh
> sqlplus -s << EOF
> `cat /file/containing/connect/string`

etc

Not bad. And nothing to stop you stopping and asking for login string if it's interactive and especially sensitive.

--
Sherilyn

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