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From: rad@genco.bungi.com (Bob Daniel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Who's in charge here: Oracle or Unix?
Keywords: Oracle, system, files
Message-ID: <371@genco.bungi.com>
Date: 8 Feb 91 21:25:26 GMT
References: <635@uswnvg.UUCP>
Reply-To: rad@genco.bungi.com (Bob Daniel)
Organization: Gentry & Assoc. Excelsior Springs, MO
Lines: 22

In article <635@uswnvg.UUCP> gbarnet@uswnvg.UUCP (Gary Barnette) writes:
>
>Request for open discussion:
>
>   We don't want any Oracle programs controlling system files for the 
>   following reasons:
>   a. Support issues (system administration doesn't know Oracle).
>   b. We want to build and modify our own admin tools.
>   c. There is a question of security. Database people need root access
>      to write these applications. Also, anyone could put a command in 
>      to provide a suid shell.
>   d. If something break, who get called? System administration.

Hmm.. I have never seen the need for an application to ALTER unix blessed files.
Particulary /etc/passwd... why do they need to alter /etc/passwd?  We might
read from UNIX files in an Oralce app but we've never needed to change anything.
I'd say an Oracle app should NOT alter UNIX system files! And for whatever
reason they need to alter (which I don't know why), they should come up with
another alternative.  Such as a sysadm tool that is developed and supplied by
the system administrator and has contains a log of what was modified.  The
Oracle app could only then use this tool and then the Sys administrators will
know if any alterations have occurred.