{"id":9843,"date":"2017-03-10T10:37:01","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T09:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dbi-services.com\/blog\/12cr2-tns_admin-in-env-ora\/"},"modified":"2017-03-10T10:37:01","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T09:37:01","slug":"12cr2-tns_admin-in-env-ora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dbi-services.com\/blog\/12cr2-tns_admin-in-env-ora\/","title":{"rendered":"12cR2: TNS_ADMIN in env.ora"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>By Franck Pachot<\/h2>\n<p>.<br \/>\nThe network files (sqlnet.ora, tnsnames.ora, lsnrctl.ora) are read by default from ORACLE_HOME\/network\/admin but you may have several Oracle installations, and want only one place for those files. Then you can use TNS_ADMIN environment variable. But are you sure that it is always set when starting the database? the listener? the client? They must be consistent (see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dbi-services.com\/blog\/oracle-12cr2-plsql-new-feature-tnsping-from-the-database\/\">https:\/\/www.dbi-services.com\/blog\/oracle-12cr2-plsql-new-feature-tnsping-from-the-database\/<\/a>). Then what we do for the cases where TNS_ADMIN is not set: define symbolic links from the ORACLE_HOME to the common location. It would be better to just change the default location and this is what can be done in 12.2 with env.ora<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nBy default, the $ORACLE_HOME\/env.ora is empty. There are only comments.<\/p>\n<p>If you run any oracle 12.2 client the $ORACLE_HOME\/ora.env will be read. If nothing is set here, then the default $ORACLE_HOME\/network\/admin location is read.<\/p>\n<h3>$ORACLE_HOME\/network\/admin<\/h3>\n<pre><code>[oracle@VM104 tmp]$ strace -e trace=file tnsping localhost 2&gt;&amp;1 | grep -E \"[.]ora\"\nlstat(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/env.ora\", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=852, ...}) = 0\nopen(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/env.ora\", O_RDONLY) = 3\naccess(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/network\/admin\/sqlnet.ora\", F_OK) = 0\nopen(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/network\/admin\/sqlnet.ora\", O_RDONLY) = 3\naccess(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/network\/admin\/sqlnet.ora\", F_OK) = 0\nopen(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/network\/admin\/sqlnet.ora\", O_RDONLY) = 3\naccess(\"\/home\/oracle\/.tnsnames.ora\", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/etc\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK)       = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/network\/admin\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Here I have a sqlnet.ora but no tnsnames.ora so the next locations that are searched are ~\/.tnsnames.ora and \/etc\/tnsnames.ora<\/p>\n<h3>TNS_ADMIN environment variable<\/h3>\n<p>If I set the environment variable TNS_ADMIN to \/tmp then <\/p>\n<pre><code>[oracle@VM104 tmp]$ TNS_ADMIN=\/tmp strace -e trace=file tnsping localhost 2&gt;&amp;1 | grep -E \"[.]ora\"\nlstat(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/env.ora\", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=852, ...}) = 0\nopen(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/env.ora\", O_RDONLY) = 3\naccess(\"\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", F_OK)         = 0\nopen(\"\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", O_RDONLY)       = 3\naccess(\"\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", F_OK)         = 0\nopen(\"\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", O_RDONLY)       = 3\naccess(\"\/home\/oracle\/.tnsnames.ora\", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/tmp\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK)       = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/etc\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK)       = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/network\/admin\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>The directory defined in TNS_ADMIN is searched first<\/p>\n<h3>TNS_ADMIN in env.ora<\/h3>\n<p>I have added the TNS_ADMIN=\/tmp in the env.ora:<\/p>\n<pre><code>[oracle@VM104 tmp]$ tail -3 $ORACLE_HOME\/env.ora\n#   Default: $ORACLE_HOME\/network\/admin\n#\nTNS_ADMIN=\/tmp\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>When I run tnsping without setting any environment variable, I have exactly the same as before:<\/p>\n<pre><code>\n[oracle@VM104 tmp]$ strace -e trace=file tnsping localhost 2&gt;&amp;1 | grep -E \"[.]ora\"\nlstat(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/env.ora\", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=867, ...}) = 0\nopen(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/env.ora\", O_RDONLY) = 3\naccess(\"\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", F_OK)         = 0\nopen(\"\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", O_RDONLY)       = 3\naccess(\"\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", F_OK)         = 0\nopen(\"\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", O_RDONLY)       = 3\naccess(\"\/home\/oracle\/.tnsnames.ora\", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/tmp\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK)       = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/etc\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK)       = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/network\/admin\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>The good thing about it is that the setting is centralized for all binaries running from this ORACLE_HOME set.<\/p>\n<h3>Both<\/h3>\n<p>However the setting in environment has priority over the env.ora one:<\/p>\n<pre><code>[oracle@VM104 tmp]$ TNS_ADMIN=\/var\/tmp strace -e trace=file tnsping localhost 2&gt;&amp;1 | grep -E \"[.]ora\"\nlstat(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/env.ora\", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=867, ...}) = 0\nopen(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/env.ora\", O_RDONLY) = 3\naccess(\"\/var\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", F_OK)     = 0\nopen(\"\/var\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", O_RDONLY)   = 3\naccess(\"\/var\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", F_OK)     = 0\nopen(\"\/var\/tmp\/sqlnet.ora\", O_RDONLY)   = 3\naccess(\"\/home\/oracle\/.tnsnames.ora\", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/var\/tmp\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK)   = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/etc\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK)       = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)\naccess(\"\/u01\/app\/oracle\/product\/12.2.0\/dbhome_1\/network\/admin\/tnsnames.ora\", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>So the recommandation if you want to use the env.ora is not to set TNS_ADMIN, especially when starting the listener or the database, to be sure that the same environment is always used. Final note: I&#8217;ve not seen it in the documentation so if you rely on it for critical environment, better to validate with support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Franck Pachot . The network files (sqlnet.ora, tnsnames.ora, lsnrctl.ora) are read by default from ORACLE_HOME\/network\/admin but you may have several Oracle installations, and want only one place for those files. Then you can use TNS_ADMIN environment variable. But are you sure that it is always set when starting the database? the listener? the client? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[656,209],"type_dbi":[],"class_list":["post-9843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-database-administration-monitoring","tag-12-2","tag-oracle-12c"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>12cR2: TNS_ADMIN in env.ora - dbi Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dbi-services.com\/blog\/12cr2-tns_admin-in-env-ora\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"12cR2: TNS_ADMIN in env.ora\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Franck Pachot . The network files (sqlnet.ora, tnsnames.ora, lsnrctl.ora) are read by default from ORACLE_HOME\/network\/admin but you may have several Oracle installations, and want only one place for those files. Then you can use TNS_ADMIN environment variable. But are you sure that it is always set when starting the database? the listener? the client? 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