setenv usage

Oracle 9.2 Std Edition on solaris

Used dbca to create scripts for createing a new db, and noticed a couple of strange things using the resulting scripts. In the base script 'mysid.sh' we find this line:

setenv ORACLE_SID mysid

On the first attempt, this line failed because the directory containing setenv wasn't in my path. So I added it to the path, then just for grins executed the line manually, and got this:

$ PATH=$PATH:/usr/oasys/bin
$ setenv ORACLE_SID mysid

cp: cannot create /home/oracle/pref/.environ: No such file or directory cp: cannot create /home/oracle/pref/.environ: No such file or directory $

Huh? So I check the man page. There, the synopsis shows the command is available for csh, but not sh or ksh. But the Oracle genned script specifically runs under /bin/sh. What am I not understanding about this?

Next step was to look at the equivilent scripts that I had used for createing new 9.2 databases at my last job. These scripts were also orginally genned with dbca, but had some manual work done after the fact. In those, I see that I followed the 'setenv' with:

ORACLE_SID=mysid
export ORACLE_SID

So ... what exactly is setenv supposed to be doing for me that I'm not accomplishing by setting and exporting ORACLE_SID myself?

Thanks. Received on Thu Oct 26 2006 - 16:12:51 CDT