different users in a cluster environment (Ora10)

[daFranze]

Hi there,

I am not the dba but the unix admin so please have mercy...

The environment:
We are running hp-ux (hewlett-packard's version of unix) with "MC/Service Guard" Cluster software.
Oracle 10 Software is installed locally on every Cluster node in /oracle. Virtual Hosts (aka. "cluster package" in Service Guard) have subdirs with links pointing to the executable or configfile itself. Both the /oracle and the /mnt/mypackage/oracle files belong to the unix user ora10.
This works fine and afak. it is supported by oracle to do so.
The big advanatage of having Oracle installed once on every node is: if you need to patch Oracle you would patch it only once even if there are n cluster packages.

My question:
running oracle as described above has the disadvantage there is only one user (ora10). But accounting (ie. quotas or consumption of CPU/RAM in hp's scopeux) works user based!
How can I (or the dbas) install Oracle running each instance with an separate user but just have one installation on each machine? (We may install Oracle per clusterpackage, but this is - now - not an option.)

Any ideas or hints are very appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Best Regards, Franz
--
System Manager (Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, some networking, some SAN)

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
I'm a little confused ( not all that rare a thing)..

IIRC,the Quotas are based on user accounts that log onto the database, not the account that owns and runs the Oracle processes...Surely you don't have everyone use the same username/password ?





To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[daFranze]

well, it might be confusing since English is not my mothertongue and Oracle ist not my topic... smile

sometimes an example makes things easier, I hope I speak "Oracle":

there is an Oracle installation
/oracle (owned and installed by user ora10 group dba)

there is the first package containing a database eg. DBABC
all files and dirs are owned by eg. ora10 group dba:
/db/DBABC
/db/DBABC/oracle
this subdir contains these _files_
./dbs/hc_DBABC.dat
./dbs/initDBABC.old
./dbs/initDBABC.ora
./dbs/lkDBABC
./dbs/orapwDBABC
./dbs/snapcf_DBABC.f
./dbs/spfileDBABC.old
./dbs/spfileDBABC.ora
./dbs/initREC_ABC.ora
./dbs/orapwREC_ABC
./dbs/lkREC_ABC
./dbs/hc_REC_ABC.dat
./network/admin/listener.ora
all other files are links to /oracle eg:
lrwxr-xr-x 1 ora10 dba 24 Sep 10 2007 ord -> /oracle/product/10.2/ord
lrwxr-xr-x 1 ora10 dba 24 Sep 10 2007 oui -> /oracle/product/10.2/oui
lrwxr-xr-x 1 ora10 dba 24 Sep 10 2007 owm -> /oracle/product/10.2/owm
lrwxr-xr-x 1 ora10 dba 25 Sep 10 2007 perl -> /oracle/product/10.2/perl
lrwxr-xr-x 1 ora10 dba 26 Sep 10 2007 plsql -> /oracle/product/10.2/plsql

There are more subdirs containing all the DB stuff like dbfs, the redo and the archive logs:
/db/DBABC/oradata
/db/DBABC/oratrans
/db/DBABC/....

if this database is running all Processes are owned by ora10

ora10 17624 1 0 Mar 17 ? 4:21 ora_mman_DBABC
ora10 17620 1 0 Mar 17 ? 85:57 ora_pmon_DBABC
ora10 18215 1 0 Mar 17 ? 5:17 ora_qmnc_DBABC
ora10 17638 1 0 Mar 17 ? 27:34 ora_cjq0_DBABC
ora10 5400 1 0 May 7 ? 0:03 oracleDBABC (LOCAL=NO)
ora10 17622 1 0 Mar 17 ? 4:44 ora_psp0_DBABC
ora10 22208 1 0 09:25:17 ? 0:00 oracleDBABC (LOCAL=NO)
ora10 17626 1 0 Mar 17 ? 180:25 ora_dbw0_DBABC
ora10 17642 1 0 Mar 17 ? 131:57 ora_mmnl_DBABC
ora10 3341 1 0 May 7 ? 0:03 oracleDBABC (LOCAL=NO)
ora10 22108 1 0 09:25:15 ? 0:00 oracleDBABC (LOCAL=NO)
ora10 22598 1 0 09:25:50 ? 0:00 oracleDBABC (LOCAL=NO)
ora10 22220 1 0 09:25:17 ? 0:00 oracleDBABC (LOCAL=NO)

if there is another database package running on this host eg:
/db/DBXYZ
and all Files are owned by ora10/dba all Processes are run by ora10.

Both, the ABC Database and XYZ Database processes are running with ora10 user. UNIX based accounting or resourcemanagement cannot distinguish which process belongs to which database...

[this scenario works fine in our environment and afaik. it's supported by Oracle]

We thought about having more than one (UNIX) Oracle user: eg. ora10 owns the /oracle installation (the binaries, the scripts, the libraries) and oraabc and oraxyz, which own the Database itself and it's logfiles etc.

Anybody seen an installation like this?

Best Regards, Franz
--
System Manager (Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, some networking, some SAN)

 

[LKBrwnDBA]

Yes you may have several oracle unix accounts, maybe the Oracle® Database Installation Guide can shed some light.
The dba group mentioned in the guide is mandatory, but the rest can either be the same account or different accounts (the account names can be anything)


There are some things to consider:
1) The oracle software, which is owned by an oracle OS account (ora10) which belongs to the dba group.
2) The data files, which also are owned by the oracle account.
3) Each oracle instance (ABC, XYZ) uses (or may use)the SAME oracle software (executables) but has its data in a different location which normally has the instance name as part of the directory (path) name.
4) You may create separate accounts for each instance (ABZ, XYZ), but they need to belong to the dba group. You may then start each instance using these acccounts. Depending on how each instance is configured, you may (or not) need to create these accounts in the database also.

Good luck!





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