This week Oracle has sent a small Christmas gift for its AVDF customers. They Released the second bundle patch for Audit Vault and Database Firewall 12.1.1. In contrast to the BP1 there is no full installation image available. New installations will have to start with the full installation image from BP1 (Patch 16965974) and apply […]
Basically I’ve solved this issue quite a while ago. Unfortunately I did not wrote any kind of documentation. That’s why I run again into SSLHandshakeException with my Eclipse installation on my new MacBook Pro, when trying to access our JIRA environment. As it now hopefully take a while until I buy again a new MacBook […]
I’ve start using the AV command line interface to administer AVDF. I use the tool fairly often to start, stop and monitor the audit trails. But recently I ran in a small issue after a typo. I just want to start the audit trail on the ADUMP directory of a database. AVCLI> LIST TRAIL FOR […]
When I started to deal with Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall (AVDF), I have always worked with the Web console. Since a few weeks I regularly use the AVCLI and start to like it. It is a simple java based command line utility, from which you can access Audit Vault and Database Firewall servers. […]
As announced yesterday in my post Oracle CPU / PSU Pre-Release Announcement October 2013, Oracle has now released the last Critical Patch Updates for 2013. Overall this CPU contains 126 new security fixes across several Oracle products like Database Server, MySQL Server, Sun Product Suite, WebLogic Server etc. For Oracle Database it contains only 2 […]
During my preparation for the tests of October Critical Patch Updates (CPU), I stumbled over an interesting Oracle Support Document. I this document Oracle announced that there will nolonger be seperate SPU (Security Patch Update) respectively CPU (Critical Patch Update) for 12.1.0.1 and newer. Excerpt from Oracle support document 1581950.1 Database Security Patching from 12.1.0.1 […]
Oracle has published the Pre-Release Announcement for the October CPU/SPU Patch. This Critical Patch Update contains 126 new security vulnerability fixes for several Oracle products. Despite the large amount of security fixes, it is a rather small update from the database point of view. There are only two security fix for the Oracle Database Server […]
As I wrote in my post Error installing Audit Vault Agent 12.1.1 on AIX, there is a Audit Vault Agent bug 17058352 on AIX. Unfortunately it hasn’t yet been fixed in the latest bundle patch for Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall. If you haven’t changed your default profile in /etc/profile on your AIX server, […]
As discussed in my post ORA-00600 [kpdbModAdminPasswdInRoot: not CDB] when changing password of default account There is an unpublished bug 16901482 which cause an ORA-00600 when trying to set a new password for an Oracle default account like DBSNMP, DIP or OUTLN. On september 4th Oracle released the one-off patch 16901482 for this bug. A […]
Oracle has released the patchset 11.2.0.4.0 for Oracle 11g Release 2. The current patchset is as well as the other 11g R2 patchsets a full installation. This means you will have to download quite a bit from Metalink, altogether 7 files. On My Oracle Support search for patchset 13390677 or follow the link to reach […]
During the test on Oracle Database 12c I run into an interesting error respectively Chris Antongini has made me aware of it. If you try to change the password of an Oracle default account on a none CDB with SQL*Plus password you run into an ORA-00600 [kpdbModAdminPasswdInRoot: not CDB] and of course the password is […]
As Markus Flechtner has already mentioned in his blog, Oracle has started to record the last login time. It is a small but very useful 12c security feature and operates independently of the database audit. Nevertheless, there are some restrictions. But let’s start at the beginning… A simple example Ok, lets try to connect as […]
It is the second time that I run into this problem. Therefore, it is time to write a quick note before I struggle a third time. At some point adding a new secure targets no longer works and breaks with an OAV-46599. Initially I was a bit confused about the error. Because there haven’t been […]
While working on the problem with missing RAM on the AVDF test system (see ) I realized, that the linux boot partition is not available by default. [root@melete2 log]# ls -al /boot total 16 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 11 2013 . drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Jul 11 20:19 .. [root@melete2 log]# df […]
Oracle just released the new bundle patch for Audit Vault and Database Firewall 12.1.1. The patch can be downloaded on metaling as RPM patch set for existing installations or as full installation images for new installations. According the readme, the BP1 contains the July 2013 PSU 11.2.0.3.7 for the database as well several bug fix […]
After initial setup of an Audit Vault and Database Firewall engineering system, I’ve started to add several audit vault agents and secure targets. In the beginning it went quite smoothly. But after a certain number of secured targets, there were continuously ORA-04031 errors. Most of the errors were related to large pool and PX Msg […]
It is sometimes a bit of a hassle, to have the latest patch name or number on hand, when you need them. Ok, you may search on My Oracle Support and save it as custom search. But it may happen that the search is inaccurate and the required patch is not found. A much easier […]
Perl and Oracle has not always an easy past. Depending on the OS type and Oracle Version it can be quite nerve racking to compile DBI and DBD::Oracle. In addition to DBD::Oracle there are also other binary Perl modules that are not so easy to compile. On operating systems such as Microsoft Windows it is necessary to […]
I’ve just added a few updates to OraDBA. Nothing big, but nevertheless a brief overview. Public appearances are now listed on a separate page. The new page provides an easier overview on planned and past public appearances. The slides will be linked in the event details as soon as they are available. Upcoming events are […]
It is not really a novum that you can directly query the alertlog from SQLPlus. Tanel Poder and others already have discussed this a while ago. Somehow I can never remember the name of the X$ view when I need it. So it is time to sum up the information a little bit. SQL> desc […]
Even with Oracle Database 12c, the quality of the database passwords is not enforced by default. A password verify function with the corresponding password resource limits has to be developed individually. As a basis one can use the script to setup the default password resource limits. The script is provided by Oracle and is used […]
About a week ago Oracle has released the July Critical Patch Updates. Overall this CPU contains 89 new security fixes across several Oracle products like Database Server, MySQL Server, Sun Product Suite, WebLogic Server etc. For Oracle Database Server it does contain 6 fixes, but none of them is for client-only installation. 1 of these […]
The Problem During the setup of the current audit vault agent 12.1.1 on AIX, I’ve run into issues. Depending on the configuration of the AIX environment, the agent can not be installed at all. avagent@host:/u00/app/avagent/ [avagent] java -jar agent.jar -d /u00/app/avagent/product/avagent /u00/app/avagent/product/avagent/bin/agentctl[56]: LOGNAME: is read only Error while executing command: [sh, /u00/app/avagent/product/avagent/bin/agentctl, fixperms] avagent@host:/u00/app/avagent/ [avagent] […]
Oracle just released Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 3. (see Oracle Enterprise Manager Downloads ) for all supported platforms. Is assume this release is related to Oracle Database 12c which has been released about a week ago. The new release can immediately be downloaded downloaded on OTN for the following platforms: Linux x86-64 (64-bit) […]
I’ve just uploaded the slides for my lecture Oracle 12c new security features, as I had promised this in my previous posts. (See also DOAG 2013 Datenbank or DOAG SIG Security). The slides is a consolidation of my presentations on the New Security Features in latest generation of Oracle Database and does no reflect 1:1 […]
Oracle still hasn’t officially announce the new Oracle Database 12c release. But since OTN database overview has been changed to 12c, I guess it is now somehow official. As rumors hinted, one of the main innovations are pluggable databases now named multitenant. Other important new features and products are: Adaptive Execution Plans Application Continuity Automatic […]
Since a few hours Oracle Database 12c is available for download on Oracle eDelivery platform. Currently it is just available for Linux x86_64. I assume that the official release is getting closer. I’ll post more details on that as well on a couple of new features soon.
I’ve just tried to get a few information from the Automatic Workload Repository (AWR). I actually wanted to put together an overview of various system metrics from DBA_HIST_SYSMETRIC_SUMMARY to create a chart. Unfortunately the data is stored as name/value pairs and not in columns. So it’s time again to convert rows to columns. There are […]
There are several way’s to find information on internal oracle errors like ORA-00600 and ORA-07445. Looking up google is one of them, but not in any case the best one. If you are using Oracle Metalink you may just search for the ORA-00600 and the error code of first argument or use the ORA-600/ORA-7445/ORA-700 Error […]
Following a question to the blog post Database Audit and Audit trail purging, I noticed something interesting about the DEFAULT_CLEANUP_INTERVAL parameter. On one hand, it is mandatory to initialize the audit trail and to define a DEFAULT_CLEANUP_INTERVAL, on the other hand, the parameter is not used at all. Oracle explains this in the MOS note Parameter […]
As I announced a while ago in SOUG Special Interest Group Baden March 21st I’ll speak again about some improvements in the latest generation of Oracle Database. The content of the presentation is a mixture of the presentations I’ve lectured at SOUG SIG Baden and DOAG SIG Security Munich. It covers the following possible new […]
Just a couple of hours ago I’ve lecture a presentation about the latest Generation of Database Technology at the DOAG SIG Security in München. It is a sneak preview on a few upcoming security improvements. Unfortunately I do not yet have the permission to provide the presentation for download. But I will make the download […]
In about two weeks I will participate at the SOUG special interest group at Baden. I will present a paper entitled “New Security Features in latest generation of Oracle Database“. Where latest generation of Oracle Database does not stand for an other Oracle 11g release. But that’s an other story… The aim of the presentation […]
As announced in my post about Oracle’s pre-release announcement of last week, Oracle has now released the first Critical Patch Updates for 2013. Overall this CPU contains 86 new security fixes across several Oracle products like Database Server, MySQL Server, Sun Product Suite, WebLogic Server etc. For products like Oracle Database Mobile it does contain […]
In the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, it went under that Oracle had released a new version of Oracle Audit Vault respectively Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall. This weekend I found some time to take a first look into the new release. What’s New About a year ago Oracle released the Audit […]
Once again, Oracle has published the Pre-Release Announcement for the first CPU Patch in 2013. This Critical Patch Update is reasonably small and contains 86 new security vulnerability fixes for several Oracle products. Only one of these fixes is just for the Oracle Database Server.