Ps command , DB credentials visible on command line.

Question

Guys,
In one of my shell scripts, I connect to the database as below:
sqlplus -s /nolog <<EOF >> ${LOG_FILE}
CONN ${DB_CONNECT}
I would assume that my database connect credentials will not be visible in the command line , when someone executes command below, during the execution of my shell script.
ps -ef | grep "sqlplus"
However, the ps listing makes the credentials visible..Thoughts please..
Thanks!!!
-Bhagat

Answer 1

Bugs wrote:
sqlplus -s /nolog <<EOF >> ${LOG_FILE}
CONN ${DB_CONNECT}
I would assume that my database connect credentials will not be visible in the command line , when someone executes command below, during the execution of my shell script.
ps -ef | grep "sqlplus"
However, the ps listing makes the credentials visible..Thoughts please..Not really relevant to either the SQL or PL/SQL server languages. Please post Unix/Linux questions in a more appropriate forum.
Operating system and version?
The ps command shows the command line. With the above example, your authentication string is not on the command line. Instead you redirect STDIN and the connect command with the username and password are read from standard input. As it is not on the command line, I fail to see why ps would show this.
I think you are misdiagnosing the problem - seeing another sqlplus process that actually specify the username and password on the command line and mistaking it for your sqlplus process.