how does oracle know what password filebelongs to each db, does it
just ?/dbs/owpwd<SID> or is it held with the db somewhere??

Doug, from the DBA Administrators Guide it would appear that this is
platform specific:

>> (file) This parameter sets the name of the password file being created. You must specify the full path name for the file. ...

The types of filenames allowed for the password file are operating
system specific. Some operating systems require the password file to
adhere to a specific format and be located in a specific directory.
Other operating systems allow the use of environment variables to
specify the name and location of the password file. See your operating
system documentation for the names and locations allowed on your
platform.
<<

Ref - Oracle® Database Administrator's Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1) Part
Number B10739-01, Ch 1 Overview of Administering an Oracle Database,
topic Using ORAPWD

HTH -- Mark D Powell --

In the windows world, you can override the default using a registry entry.
I'm home and don't have the exact entry handy but you can find it easily in
metalink. I did this to move the file from a non-mirrored disk to a
mirrored disk. Works great.


<doug.fulton@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1130337279.093601.221570@o13g2000cwo.googlegr oups.com...
> how does oracle know what password filebelongs to each db, does it
> just ?/dbs/owpwd<SID> or is it held with the db somewhere??
>

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 07:59:07 -0700, Mark D Powell wrote:

> The types of filenames allowed for the password file are operating
> system specific. Some operating systems require the password file to
> adhere to a specific format and be located in a specific directory.

Unrelated to your post, Oracle used to support a shell variable or a
logical in VMS called ORA_PWFILE or ORA_SID_PWFILE which was pointing
to a non-default password file location. As the following shows, this is
no longer supported:

$ strings $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle|egrep "ORA_.*PWFILE"|wc -l
0
$

Does anybody here know why was that de-supported?

--
http://www.mgogala.com

Mladen Gogala wrote:
>
> Unrelated to your post, Oracle used to support a shell variable or a
> logical in VMS called ORA_PWFILE or ORA_SID_PWFILE which was pointing
> to a non-default password file location. As the following shows, this is
> no longer supported:
>
> $ strings $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle|egrep "ORA_.*PWFILE"|wc -l
> 0
> $
>
> Does anybody here know why was that de-supported?

Using strings to check this is an interesting idea. I tried that on
9.2.0.7 Oracle on Linux and didn't find the string. But "ORA_%s_PWFILE"
and "ORA_PWFILE" both exist in 9.2, 10.1 and 10.2 Oracle.exe on
Windows. According to the message in forum thread 175222.995 (dated
Jan-02), ORA_PWFILE and ORA_SID_PWFILE have some problems on UNIX. That
may be why they're dropped from UNIX. According to an older thread
97750.999, they're not available to UNIX at all. Searching for
"ORA_PWFILE" on tahiti.oracle.com returns hits only pointing to Windows
admin guide in 10g, and Windows admin guide plus ORA-1990 error message
in 9i. Although tahiti doesn't find it, the two variables are indeed
used in VMS as well.

Yong Huang