C Oracle Net Services Configuration on Windows

This appendix describes Oracle Net Services configuration for Windows. For more generic information on Oracle Net Services configuration, see Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide.

This appendix contains these topics:

Configuring Oracle Database to Communicate with ASM
Understanding Oracle Net Services Registry Parameters and Subkeys
Listener Requirements
Understanding Optional Configuration Parameters
Advanced Network Configuration

Configuring Oracle Database to Communicate with ASM

Oracle Database for Windows installations that use Automatic Storage Management (ASM) must use Windows native authentication, which is enabled by default. To ensure that it is, check that the sqlnet.ora file, by default located in ORACLE_HOME\network\admin, has NTS enabled. For example:

sqlnet.authentication_services=(NTS)

Understanding Oracle Net Services Registry Parameters and Subkeys

The registry contains entries for Oracle Net Services parameters and subkeys. To successfully add or modify Oracle Net Services configuration parameters, you must understand where they are located and the rules that apply to them.

Oracle Net Service Subkeys

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services contains subkeys that correspond to services. Depending on what is installed, your Oracle Net Services consist of all or a subset of the following:

OracleHOME_NAMEClientCache
OracleHOME_NAMECMAdmin
OracleHOME_NAMECMan
OracleHOME_NAMETNSListener

Each service subkey contains the parameters shown in Table C-1.

Table C-1 Service Subkey Parameters

Parameter	Description
`DisplayName`	Specifies service name.
`ImagePath`	Specifies fully qualified path name of the executable started by service and any command line arguments passed to executable at run time.
`ObjectName`	Specifies logon user account and computer to which service should log on.

Listener Requirements

In Oracle Database 10g Release 1 (10.1) or later, the listener is set to start automatically at system restart. If you intend to use only the listener for all of your databases, ensure that only the Windows service for the listener, as listed in the Control Panel, is set to start automatically.

Oracle usually recommends that you only have a single net listener service on a Windows computer at any one time. This single listener can support multiple databases. If you must have two different net listener services on a Windows computer at the same time, ensure that they are configured to listen on different TCP/IP port numbers.

If the same IP address and port are used for different listeners, you might expect that the second and subsequent listeners would fail to bind. Instead, Windows allows them all to listen on the same IP address and port, resulting in unexpected behavior of the listeners. This is a suspected Windows operating system problem with TCP/IP and has been reported to Microsoft.

Understanding Optional Configuration Parameters

You can use the following parameters on Windows:

LOCAL
TNS_ADMIN
USE_SHARED_SOCKET

Oracle Net Service first checks for the parameters as environment variables, and uses the values defined. If environment variables are not defined, it searches for these parameters in the registry.

LOCAL

You can use parameter LOCAL to connect to Oracle Database without specifying a connect identifier in the connect string. The value of parameter LOCAL is any connect identifier, such as a net service name. For example, if parameter LOCAL is specified as finance, you can connect to a database from SQL*Plus with:

SQL> CONNECT SCOTT
Enter password: password

rather than

SQL> CONNECT SCOTT@finance
Enter password: password

Oracle Net checks if LOCAL is defined as an environment variable or as a parameter in the registry, and uses finance as the service name. If it exists, Oracle Net connects.

TNS_ADMIN

You can add parameter TNS_ADMIN to change the directory path of Oracle Net Services configuration files from the default location of ORACLE_HOME\network\admin. For example, if you set TNS_ADMIN to ORACLE_HOME\test\admin, the configuration files are used from ORACLE_HOME\test\admin.

USE_SHARED_SOCKET

The use of shared sockets is enabled by default, that is the default value of USE_SHARED_SOCKET is true. In this case, the network listener passes the socket descriptor for client connections to the database thread. As a result, the client does not establish a new connection to the database thread and the database connection time improves. All database connections also share the port number used by the network listener, which can be useful if you are setting third-party proxy servers.

This parameter only works in dedicated server mode in a TCP/IP environment. To reserve a dedicated server for an instance of Oracle Database not associated with the same Oracle home as the listener and with shared socket enabled, you must set USE_SHARED_SOCKET parameter for both the Oracle homes.

Note:

Do not set this parameter explicitly in your registry unless instructed by Oracle Support. Setting USE_SHARED_SOCKET to false disables the use of shared sockets.

Advanced Network Configuration

The following sections describe advanced configuration procedures specifically for Oracle Net Services on Windows operating systems:

Configuring Authentication Method
Configuring Security for Named Pipes Protocol
Modifying Configuration of External Procedures for Higher Security

Configuring Authentication Method

Oracle Net Services provides authentication methods for Windows operating systems using Windows Native Authentication.

Configuring Security for Named Pipes Protocol

The network listener service may be unable to open the Named Pipe created by Oracle Names unless service OracleHOME_NAMETNSListener has a valid user ID and password associated with it.

Modifying Configuration of External Procedures for Higher Security

This section supplements generic information provided in Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide to configure a listener on Windows operating systems to exclusively handle external procedures. For a higher level of security, you are instructed to start the listener for external procedures from a user account with lower privileges than the oracle user. For Windows operating systems, this requires that you change the user account from LocalSystem to a local, unprivileged user for the OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name service.

Note:

The following instructions assume that you have performed steps 1 through 5 in the section "Modifying Configuration of External Procedures for Higher Security" in Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide.

To change the listener account:

Create a new user account and grant it Log on as a Service privilege.

Note:
Ensure that this user account does not have general access to files owned by oracle. Specifically, this user should not have permission to read or write to database files or to the Oracle Database server address space. In addition, this user should have read access to the listener.ora file, but must not have write access to it.
Stop service OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name.

See Also:
Your operating system documentation for instructions on accessing the Services dialog and stopping services
Note:
If the OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name service does not exist, issue the following command from the command prompt:
```
lsnrctl start extproc_listener_name 
```
This creates the OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name service. When you return to the list of services, stop this service before proceeding to the next step of this procedure.
Select OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name service in the Services dialog and then display the properties of the service.
Select This Account and enter the user name and password.
Start the listener by clicking Start. You must start the listener in this way because you cannot use the Listener Control utility to start the listener as an unprivileged local user.

Note:
You can also use NET START OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name to start the listener from the command prompt. the listener with lower privileges prevents you from using Listener Control utility SET commands to alter the configuration of this listener in file listener.ora. You can perform other administrative tasks on this listener with the Listener Control utility, including stopping the listener. Oracle recommends that you complete listener.ora file configuration before the listener.