shutdown database(s) from root user

I'm running Oracle 8.1.7 on Solaris 8.

I have a UPS vendor supplied script that can be used to shutdown the system. This script can be customized, but currently it is setup to just send a message to everyone and then perform an "/etc/shutdown". I want to shutdown my databases before it starts the OS shutdown, but the daemon that is watching to see if it gets a message from the UPS is running under root. My database is normally shutdown using scripts I wrote running from the oracle user. This database shutdown script just runs like this:

sqlplus internal <<EOF
shutdown immediate
exit
EOF Since I normally run these from the oracle user, this script does not prompt me for a password when it uses the user internal. But, since this UPS shutdown script is executed from the daemon running under root, these database shutdown scripts don't work. I've tried to su to oracle but that doesn't work either (prompts me for a password).

I must be missing something "obvious" here, but can't seem to get this to work. Does anyone know how I can run sqlplus from root, login with a username and then run the -shutdown immediate- command to shutdown my database?

Thank-you for your help.

Jim Day
jday_at_fslso.com Received on Wed May 28 2003 - 17:43:23 CDT