PowerProtect Data Manager 19.10 Oracle RMAN User Guide

Operating system authentication requirements

The operating system authentication method can only be used on systems with a single Oracle home or with multiple Oracle homes that were all installed by the same user. During authentication, the ddbmcon program either obtains the Oracle installation user ID or reads the operating system username from the rman_agent.cfg configuration file. Then the program changes the real user of the process to the Oracle installation user or the operating system user, to connect to the database instance.

When the ddbmcon program uses the authentication method on a system with multiple Oracle homes that were installed by different users, the program returns information for only one Oracle home. The program returns a connection error for the other Oracle homes.

During the backup discovery, the ddbmcon program tries to use the operating system authentication method only after the database authentication and Oracle wallet authentication methods have both failed to connect to the Oracle database.

To enable the operating system authentication method, you must set the following parameters for each required SID in the rman_agent.cfg configuration file:

• If the username to be used for the connection is different than ORACLE_OSDBA_USER, set ORACLE_OS_USER.
• If an RMAN catalog is used, set RMAN_CATALOG_SERVICE and RMAN_CATALOG_USER.

For example, the rman_agent.cfg configuration file includes the following settings to enable the operating system authentication for the database SID orcl:

[SID_orcl]
  ORACLE_OS_USER = ORACLE1

To confirm that operating system authentication is enabled, you can log in as the root user and run the ddutil commands as described in Verify the connectivity from ddbmcon.