One minor thing I do on all of my unix based Oracle database servers is setup the shell prompt to give me some key information. Namely, I always want to see my current directory, the user I am logged in as, the server I am logged into, and my current ORACLE_SID. Since I typically have many servers, oracle instances, and shell sessions open to manage them all, its easy to get confused as to what server and database your executing commands against.
My solution to this is to setup my shell prompt to show all of this information. The instructions I provide below will show you how to do this on a RedHat Linux AS3 system. It should work on most other Linux systems, and needs minor modifications for use on Sun Solaris systems.
1) First, login to your server as the root user.
2) Edit the file /etc/profile. My instructions change the prompt for all users on the system. Typically I have accounts for not only my oracle user, but also for key daemon processes. Whoever I am logged into my server as I want to see this same info for on my shell prompt.
3) Put the following code at the end of your /etc/profile file:
#For shell prompt display
export LOGIN=`whoami`
export PWD=`pwd`
export HOSTNAME=`hostname -a`
export PS1=`echo '\n[$PWD]\n$LOGIN@$HOSTNAME [${TWO_TASK:-$ORACLE_SID}] > '`
4) Now relogin to your server. Your prompt should look similar to my prompt below.
[/opt/app/oracle/product/10.1.2_infra] oracle@as1 [asdb] >
The top line shows my current working directory. This is the line that says [/opt/app/oracle/product/10.1.2_infra].
The second line shows the current user that I am logged in as (oracle) followed by the @ symbol with the hostname of the server I am working on (as1). Lastly, there is a space and then my current ORACLE_SID is displayed ([asdb]).
Hopefully this tip helps you. I find that it makes my life much easier. If you're looking for more Linux related information, I have found this book invaluable:
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