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Oracle® Shared Shell User's Guide Release 4.4 Part Number E26594-01 |
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# 1 Oracle Shared Shell Overview

This guide is designed for Oracle Support Services customers who use Oracle Shared Shell to conduct secure conferences with Oracle Support Services engineers. Oracle Shared Shell is a Java application designed to provide secure, shared, remote access to a command-line user interface, such as a shell. A shell is a text-based login session running on your system, under your control. You can invite your colleagues or additional Oracle engineers to participate in the conference as needed. You are always in control of who participates and who has access to the remote access session.

All communication between you and Oracle is secured by industry-standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. Oracle Shared Shell also provides secure file transfer (which you control) and a chat interface for sending text messages between participants.

All activity from your system and Oracle is logged on both sides. Information logged includes all output from your shell, chat messages, file transfer information, and conference events, such as participants joining or leaving.

## Terminology

You need to understand the following terms before using Oracle Shared Shell:

- Initiator: The person and Oracle Shared Shell client that initiates a session. This is the Shared Shell client that makes a local connection to the target server that is being diagnosed and invites and approves all other participants.

- Participant: A person and Oracle Shared Shell client that joins a session using an invitation key provided by you in your role as the initiator.

- Target system: The system being diagnosed, initially accessed by a local connection by you as the conference initiator. You must use either a Telnet or Secure Shell (SSH) connection. The target system can be an Oracle server, a terminal server or console server, a Linux box, a storage array, or any other device that supports Telnet or SSH access.

- Initiator system: The system from which you initiate the Oracle Shared Shell session.

- Shell: The command line interface to the operating system on the target system.

## System Prerequisites

The initiator system must meet the following requirements:

- Network connectivity from the initiator system to the Telnet or SSH port on the target system.

- Current and supported versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) should be installed and the Java Plug-In enabled. Links are provided on the Shared Shell launch page so you can check your JRE installation or download a new version.

- A web browser that can support Java with the current JRE version.

- Internet access from the initiator system to the Oracle Shared Shell server, optionally through a proxy server, to ports 80 and 443.

The systems of the participants joining the conference must meet the following requirements:

- Current and supported versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) should be installed and the Java Plug-In enabled. Links are provided on the Shared Shell launch page so participants can check their JRE installation or download a new version.

- A web browser that can support Java with the current JRE version.

- Internet access from the participant system to the Shared Shell server ports 80 and 443, optionally through a proxy server.

The target system must have Telnet or SSH enabled.

## Information to Gather Before Using Shared Shell

Name | Description
--- | ---
Login | You need an Oracle Web Account username (e-mail address) and password to use Shared Shell. This is the same account you use to access resources on oracle.com, including My Oracle Support. Note: If you don't have an account, you create one at `http://myprofile.oracle.com`. Oracle employees: Use your Oracle Single Sign-On account credentials.
Shell/Server connection | Protocol that you will use for this session (Telnet or SSH). Host name or IP Address of the target system. If you are launching Shared Shell from the target system, type localhost in the address field. Port for the Telnet or SSH connection, if it is set to something other than the default (23 and 22, respectively).
Terminal type | Oracle Shared Shell emulates a subset of the ANSI and VT100 terminal standard. You should set your "term" environment variable to "vt100" or "xterm." (Note: some products such as ILOM consoles use the "sun" terminal type by default. Change this to "vt100" or "xterm" for best results.)
Proxy | Some networks are configured so that you must use a proxy server to reach the Internet. If your network requires a proxy, you must gather the following information: Proxy type (HTTPS or SOCK5) Proxy server address Proxy port Proxy user name (if proxy authentication is required) Proxy user name (if proxy authentication is required)

Note:

Currently, Oracle Shared Shell supports only SSH with password authentication.

You need to have Oracle Shared Shell connect to an intermediate host that has a full-featured SSH client, such as a development/test server that allows Telnet or SSH with password authentication.

You can use Oracle Shared Shell to connect to the console port on your server only if that console port is accessible through a terminal server or console server that allows access with Telnet or SSH. You need to specify the host name or IP address of the terminal server or console server and the corresponding port that will connect to the target machine.