Re: Oracle background processes

Hi,

gotta_know wrote:  

> On a Unix platform we use the oracle id to start the database.
> Therefore, the database is started and the owner of the background
> processes, i.e pmon smon..., is oracle. Is there any impact to the
> oracle server, or applications, if the database is started under
> another Unix users ID?

You are not saying *why* you want to do it, or what you mean by Unix user ID.

In Unix the names are not the really id. You can have a user named "oracle" with a UID of 700 (and group "dba" with a GID of 500). If you create another user named "tom" with the UID 700 (and group "you" with a GID of 500) you really have the same user when it comes to fileaccess, but not on passwords og login options.
But why do you want to do this? It can be a good ide, if you got 2 DBAs and they don't agree about anything in enviroment :) but it is no securety in this. In this case user "oracle" and user "tom" can do what they want with the oracle software and the instances.

Or perhaps you mean that you can change the owner and group of the oracle software? Yes you can. "oracle" as user and "dba" as group are really only names. You can call your user and group whatever you want. The point is that it is the software owner that runs the instanses. If you install the oracle software in two locations with two *different* users. You have a situation there the databases are "protected" against each other. (You can not overwrite the files of one database from another and so on. You can patch one instance and not the other and so on) This I have done myselves and it's an easy way to protect instances. The only thing it requieres is the double amount of disk space for the software.

> I cannot find anything on Mental link(Metalink) in regards to this
> question.

This isn't really a oracle question, so it has nothing to do in metalink :)

regards Hanne

--
Hanne Midttun
http://www.tihlde.org/~hannem