Stephen's Oracle Blog

This morning someone passed me a link to " The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing ". Looks pretty accurate. I'd say that many of them are doubly true of RAC .

Just recieved the following email via one of the Oracle DBA lists I'm on: Hello, I am XXX from Singapore.I am also an Oracle Certified Professional (OCP).Could I know size of any database and what's the size of SGA for that Database and how long it take to complete Logical Backup and Physical Backup.I will be awiting for ur reply. Thanks in Advance Regards XXXX Names have been removed to protect the guilty. Now, I have no particular problems with answering beginner questions (I've asked a fair few myself), even though the list this email appeared on is suposedly an experienced DBA list, not a newbie list. I'm quite happy to ignore the poor standard of English, the questioner probably doesn't speak English as their first language (although in Eric S Raymond's guide to Newbies, on how to ask questions, he does state that they should be asked in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language ). The thing is the questioner is an OCP, or at least claims to be, and...

Simon Kelsey commeted on one of my earlier entries on this subject that x$kzsrt may be involved: SQL> select * from v$fixed_view_definition where view_name='GV$PWFILE_USERS'; VIEW_NAME ------------------------------ VIEW_DEFINITION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GV$PWFILE_USERS select inst_id,username,decode(sysdba,1,'TRUE','FALSE'), decode(sysoper,1,'TRUE ','FALSE') from x$kzsrt where valid=1 and username != 'INTERNAL' I then got to thinking, does the 'alter user...;' just alter the copy of the password in memory or does it update the password file as well? I constructed a little test case. First I opened two sessions on the server as the Oracle software owner user (i.e. 'oracle'). In the first I connected to the database as 'sys' using the existing SYSDBA password and then changed the password using the 'alter user...;' method: $ sqlplus /nolog SQL...

QUESTION ========= 1) Does Oracle cache the SYSDBA password? 2) Is there a way to force it to re-read the password file to pick up a changed password without havi ng to shutdown the database? RESEARCH ========= Note.1029539.6 - UNIX How to Set up the Oracle Password File Note 185703.1 - How to Avoid Common Flaws and Errors Using Passwordfile Note 114384.1 - WIN: Checklist for Resolving CONNECT AS SYSDBA (INTERNAL) Issues ANSWER ======= 1) Yes. this is cached. The passwordfile is read only at the beginning, when the instance is started. 2) There is no way to force Oracle read the passwordfile, but one can use : alter user sys identified by ; After this the "cache" should be changed to the new password. Guess that answers that question then. I've double checked the course materials from the Oracle DBA courses I've been on and they all say the way to change the SYSDBA password is to use orapwd, none of them mention using 'alter user...'.

A couple of days ago I posted an entry about an issue I'd run into reseting the SYSDBA password . Today I noticed my hits had jumped, checking my refer log I noticed a lot from Peter Finnigan's blog, he'd posted an entry linking to the post . In the entry he says that, if true, it was interesting. I don't know about interesting, but it's definately a true record of what happened. I'd be suprised if I'm the first person to run into this issue. I did recieve a comment to the entry (from an anonymous user) saying that you have to shutdown the database before recreating the password file. I don't recall ever reading that or hearing it mentioned on a course, could be true or it could be one of the many Oracle myths going around. I found an example on orafaq.com that does include shutting down the database (after recreating the password file) but also talks about changing REMOTE_LOGIN_PASSWORDFILE in the init.ora file, which would require a database rest...