A GREAT VIEW

The V$PWFILE_USERS view lists all users for an instance who have been granted the SYSDBA and/or the SYSOPER privileges. This information is derived from the password file. The views contents are:
Column Datatype Description
USERNAME VARCHAR2(30) Name of the user that is contained in the password file
SYSDBA VARCHAR2(5) Indicates whether the user can connect with SYSDBA privileges
(TRUE) or not (FALSE)
SYSOPER VARCHAR2(5) Indicates whether the user can connect with SYSOPER privileges
(TRUE) or not (FALSE)
SYSASM VARCHAR2(5) Indicates whether the user can connect with SYSASM privileges
(TRUE) or not (FALSE)

If you want to grant a user the sysdba privilege the following items need to be in place:
1) The remote_login_password parameter must be set to either “shared” or “exclusive”. (“shared” then it can be used by other instances; “exclusive” then it can only be used by that single instance). You can check the parameter setting by issuing the following statement:
SQL> show parameter password
NAME TYPE VALUE
------------------------------------ ----------- ----------remote_login_passwordfile string EXCLUSIVE

If it is not set or set to “shared” or “exclusive” you can add/change the parameter in the init.ora file:
remote_login_passwordfile=EXCLUSIVE
2) You must have or create an orapwd password file using the orapwd utility:
$ orapwd file= password= nosysdba= entries= force= ignorecase=

The file is as you would expect the name of the file that will hold the password information. Unless you path it, the file location will default to your current directory.

The password is the password for the SYS user.

The nosysdba is to identify whether or not to shut out the sysdba loging.

The entries are the maximum number of users that can be granted the SYSDBA or SYSOPER privilege.

The force identifies whether or not to overwrite the existing password file.

The ignorecase identifies if the passwords are case sensitive or not.

Note: The contents of the orapwd file are encrypted and are therefore unreadable. Also, if there is no orapwd password file and you attempt to grant sysdba to a user it will fail and generate an ORA-01994 error (GRANT failed: cannot add user to public password file). And an important change to be aware of is that until 11g passwords were not case sensitive; however, since the introduction of 11g passwords can be either case or non-case sensitive. The values are either required or optional as follows: file=required; password=optional; nosysdba=optional; entries=required; force=optional; ignorecase=optional. It is also important to remember that there can be no spaces on either side of the ‘=’ (equals) sign.

One last thing is that you issue an orapwd help=y to get the usage:
Usage: orapwd file= password= entries= force=
ignorecase= nosysdba=

3) Grant sysdba to ; Grant succeeded.