SYS.UTIL_FILE

Question

Connected to Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.1.0.5.0
We have this working fine on this version database
Connected to Oracle Database 11g Release 11.2.0.1.0
Created a directory 'TEST_DIR' with a path of \\1234-winxp\temp <-- This is a directory on a PC with sharing options to everyone
declare
     output_file utl_file.file_type;
          v_path      VARCHAR2(20) := TEST_DIR';
          v_filename  VARCHAR2(10) := 'x.txt';
              v_text      VARCHAR2(32000);
BEGIN
     output_file := utl_file.fopen(upper(v_path),
                                               v_filename,
                                               'w',
                                               32767);
          utl_file.put(output_file,
                          v_text);
          utl_file.fclose(output_file); ....
END;when I run this code in 11g database, file gets written, everything is okay, please note that 11g database is on a windows server, the 10g is on OPEN VMS
When I run this code in 10g database, we get these errors
ORA-29283: Invalid file operation
ORA-06512: at SYS.UTL_FILE line 457
ORA-29283: invalid file operation
I've searched forum/google to no avail.
The permissions are identical in both databases.
can anyone please shed some light as to what I am missing?
thanks in advance.

Answer 1

A file share on Windows is done using Microsoft's NTLM (New Technology Lan Manager) networking and application protocols.
For a client to access and use that share, it needs to be a NTLM client. This means the client needs to talk to a NetBIOS interface/driver that creates SMBs (Server Message Blocks) for communicating with the NTLM server.
You can not simply point an Oracle directory object to a NTLM share and expect it to magically just work.
That Oracle server needs to support NTLM. It needs to authenticate itself with the NTLM file server. It need to use SMBs to read and write files to and from that NTLM file server.
So do you have NTLM support on your OpenVMS server? Does it have some kind of NetBIOS interface that the o/s can use to talk SMB?
On Linux there is Open Source s/w called Samba that implements SMB support - and Samba clients and servers can talk to Microsoft NTLM/CIFS clients and servers.
What do you have installed and configured on your OpenVMS server to support SMB?
PS. Like a FTP client and FTP server are needed on the client and server side to talk FTP and transfer files, a Windows share needs specific s/w on the client, and specific s/w on the server, for the client and server to transfer file data using SMB (or what Microsoft arrogantly calls CIFS).