O/S Message: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Question

Hi everyone,
In a shell (sh) script, on Solaris 5.9, the following is being done:
sqlplus /nolog <<EOF
whenever oserror exit 1
whenever sqlerror exit 1
connect DBUSER/DBPASSWORD
select * from sometable;
EOF
This produces the following output and exits with return value 1:
SQL*Plus: Release 9.2.0.8.0 - Production on Wed Feb 13 04:21:40 2008
Copyright (c) 1982, 2002, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.
SQL> SQL> SQL> O/S Message: Inappropriate ioctl for device
Disconnected from Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.8.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning option
JServer Release 9.2.0.8.0 - Production
The same happens when the above is being pasted in a bash session.
When doing it line by line in an sqlplus session, everything is fine.
Additional data:
# uname -a
SunOS kpn-sup-smp 5.9 Generic_117171-07 sun4u sparc SUNW,UltraAX-i2
SQL> select * from v$version;
BANNER
Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.8.0 - 64bit Production
PL/SQL Release 9.2.0.8.0 - Production
CORE 9.2.0.8.0 Production
TNS for Solaris: Version 9.2.0.8.0 - Production
NLSRTL Version 9.2.0.8.0 - Production
# opatch lsinventory
[ ... prolog cut ... ]
Installed Patch List:
=====================
1) Patch 5606601 applied on Tue Feb 12 03:36:14 CET 2008
[ Base Bug(s): 5606601  ]
2) Patch 5495695 applied on Tue Feb 12 03:33:37 CET 2008
[ Base Bug(s): 5495695  ]
3) Patch 4008133 applied on Tue Feb 12 03:30:01 CET 2008
[ Base Bug(s): 4008133  ]
Any ideas ...? TIA.
Cheers,
Benjamin.

Answer 1

I just came across this issue after upgrading from 9.2.0.6 to 9.2.0.8:
It appears that putting "connect" as the first line resolves the problem.
i.e.:
sqlplus /nolog <<EOF
connect DBUSER/DBPASSWORD
whenever oserror exit 1
whenever sqlerror exit 1
select * from sometable;
EOF
Kind regards
Christos