Sudo Privilege Requirements for Oracle Environments
Delphix Administration / Oracle Environments and Data Sources / Oracle Support and Requirements / Sudo Privilege Requirements for Oracle Environments


This topic describes the rationale behind specific sudo privilege requirements for virtualizing Oracle Databases.
PrivilegeSourcesTargetsRationale
ps | pargsOptional, Strongly RecommendedOptional, Strongly Recommended

Delphix auto-discovery uses the TNS_ADMIN environment variable of Oracle Listener processes with non-standard configurations to derive their  connection parameters. A different user (oracle), rather than delphix_os user normally owns the oracle listener. The Delphix Engine needs sudo access to pargs on the Solaris OS or ps on other OSes to determine the environment variables of those Listener processes.

This privilege is required for Auto-Discovery with non-default TNS_ADMIN locations. It is optional when using a standard TNS_ADMIN location, or if you choose to manually configure Oracle Homes, databases and listeners.

mount/umountNot RequiredRequiredThe Delphix Engine dynamically mounts and unmounts directories under the provisioning directory during VDB operations. This privilege is required because mount and umount are typically reserved for superuser.
nfso (AIX only)Not RequiredRequiredThe Delphix Engine monitors NFS read and write sizes on an AIX target host. It uses the nfso command to query the sizes in order to optimize NFS performance for VDBs running on the target host. Only a superuser can issue the nfso command.


It is required to specify the NOPASSWD qualifier within the "sudo" configuration file, as shown here: Sudo File Configuration Examples for Oracle Environments.  This ensures that the "sudo" command does not demand the entry of a password, even for the "display permissions" (i.e. "sudo -l") command.

Delphix issues "sudo -l" in some scripts to detect if the operating system user has the correct sudo privileges. If it is unable to execute this command, some actions may fail and Delphix will raise an alert suggesting it does not have the correct sudo permissions. Restricting the execution of "sudo -l" by setting “listpw=always” in the “/etc/sudoers” file when the Delphix operating system user is configured to use public key authentication will cause the Delphix operating system user to be prompted for a password which will fail certain Delphix actions. Use a less restrictive setting for listpw than "always" when the Delphix operating system user is using public key authentication.

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