Silence mode prompting for password?

Question

I have two IBM AIX Servers. One is having Oracle Client 10.2.0.4 installed and another is having Oracle Client 10.2.0.5 installed. In SQLPLUS silent mode, per the oracle documentation, the username and the password prompts are not invoked and no other prompts are invoked. But in oracle 10.2.0.5, the "Enter password:" prompt is coming causing some issues with my shell scripts. Below is the log of both the servers. I have just connect to sqlplus using /NOLOG and connected to the schema@DB and entered password and selected 1 from dual.

In IBM AIX 5.3 with Oracle Client 10.2.0.4 (this is working fine):

$> sqlplus -s /NOLOG
connect schema_name@DBName

select 1 from dual;

1
-------
1

exit
$>

In IBM AIX 6.1 with Oracle Client 10.2.0.5 (this is not working properly):

$> sqlplus -s /NOLOG
connect schema_name@DBName
Enter password:
select 1 from dual;

1
-------
1

exit
$>

Clearly, it can be seen that the "Enter password:" is getting displayed in the silent mode. Do I need to configure something in the Oracle Client 10.2.0.5 to fix this issue.

Are you sure the client is 10.2.0.5, not the server; and you aren't using an 11g client? This looks like bug 9693295 but that only mentions 11gR2 (see MOS Doc ID 1101753.1). If you are can you patch, or use a later instant client for the script? If you're doing the connect in a non-interactive script you can supply the password as part of the connect and still not display it, but not sure what your script is doing. — Alex Poole
$>sqlplus schema_name@DBName SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production on Tue Sep 16 02:39:33 2014 Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle. All Rights Reserved. Enter password: Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - 64bit Production SQL> — Ranatosh Das
OK; looks like a bug anyway, maybe you can find a 10g version (and patch) on MOS. Or use an 11.2.0.3 or higher client. — Alex Poole
In our app codebase we connect to the db and supply the password separately and retrieve data. As the "Enter password:" prompt is coming, in the data we fetch from the DB the "Enter password:" is also coming and we are getting erronous output. We can provide the password with the schema and db name which would prevent the "Enter password:" prompt but that would mean huge code change which we are trying to avoid. I thought the password and user prompt should not come in the silent mode. Can we fix this. Can you please suggest a patch for the 10.2.0.5 version which would resolve this issue. — Ranatosh Das
You'd need to search My Oracle Support or raise a service request to find a patch for 10.2.0.5, if one exists at all. I would really consider using the current instant client though, distributing with your app if necessary. (I believe the AIX 5 version is valid for 6.1 too). — Alex Poole

Alex Poole Alex Poole · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-16T11:46:23

This is bug 12577165, reported against 10.2.0.5; and marked as a duplicate of 10413991. (There's also a separate bug 9693295 for the same behaviour in 11.2.0.1 and 11.2.0.2, and the patch for the same internal bug 10413991 is in the 11.2.0.3 patch bundle).

There seems to be a patch for 10.2.0.5 for Linux and Solaris, but not for AIX; and you'd need an extended support contract (at least) to get the patch. You should raise a service request with Oracle to confirm the bug and see if a patch is available to you.

Alternatively you could use a later version of the instant client, without disturbing or needing to upgrade your current client version, to work around the issue.

It isn't something you can configure in the client you have though.

Silence mode prompting for password?

1 Answers