Skip to main content
Version: 18.x

Database Access with Oracle

Report an issue with this page

Teleport can provide secure access to Oracle via the Teleport Database Service. This allows for fine-grained access control through the Teleport RBAC system.

The Teleport Database Service proxies traffic from database clients to self-hosted databases in your infrastructure. Teleport maintains a certificate authority (CA) for database clients. You configure your database to trust the Teleport database client CA, and the Teleport Database Service presents certificates signed by this CA when proxying user traffic. With this setup, there is no need to store long-lived credentials for self-hosted databases.

Meanwhile, the Teleport Database Service verifies self-hosted databases by checking their TLS certificates against either the Teleport database CA or a custom CA used with the database.

In this guide, you will:

  1. Configure your Oracle database for Teleport access.
  2. Add the database to your Teleport cluster.
  3. Connect to the database via Teleport.

How it works​

The Teleport Database Service authenticates to your self-hosted Oracle database using mutual TLS. Oracle trusts the Teleport certificate authority for database clients, and presents a certificate signed by either the Teleport database CA or a custom CA. When a user initiates a database session, the Teleport Database Service presents a certificate signed by Teleport. The authenticated connection then proxies client traffic from the user.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport Enterprise cluster. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.

  • The tctl and tsh clients.

    Installing tctl and tsh clients

    1. Determine the version of your Teleport cluster. The tctl and tsh clients must be at most one major version behind your Teleport cluster version. Send a GET request to the Proxy Service at /v1/webapi/find and use a JSON query tool to obtain your cluster version. Replace teleport.example.com:443 with the web address of your Teleport Proxy Service:

      TELEPORT_DOMAIN=teleport.example.com:443
      TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl -s https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/find | jq -r '.server_version')"

    2. Follow the instructions for your platform to install tctl and tsh clients:

      Download the signed macOS .pkg installer for Teleport, which includes the tctl and tsh clients:

      curl -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-${TELEPORT_VERSION?}.pkg

      In Finder double-click the pkg file to begin installation.

      danger

      Using Homebrew to install Teleport is not supported. The Teleport package in Homebrew is not maintained by Teleport and we can't guarantee its reliability or security.

  • Self-hosted Oracle server instance 18c or later.
  • The sqlcl Oracle client installed and added to your system's PATH environment variable or any GUI client that supports JDBC Oracle thin client.
  • Optional: a certificate authority that issues certificates for your self-hosted database.

Step 1/6. Create a Teleport token and user​

The Database Service requires a valid join token to join your Teleport cluster. Run the following tctl command and save the token output in /tmp/token on the server that will run the Database Service:

tctl tokens add --type=db --format=text
abcd123-insecure-do-not-use-this
tip

To modify an existing user to provide access to the Database Service, see Database Access Controls

Create a local Teleport user with the built-in access and requester roles:

tctl users add \  --roles=access,requester \  --db-users=\* \  --db-names=\* \  alice
FlagDescription
--rolesList of roles to assign to the user. The builtin access role allows them to connect to any database server registered with Teleport.
--db-usersList of database usernames the user will be allowed to use when connecting to the databases. A wildcard allows any user.
--db-namesList of logical databases (aka schemas) the user will be allowed to connect to within a database server. A wildcard allows any database.
warning

Database names are only enforced for PostgreSQL and MongoDB databases.

For more detailed information about database access controls and how to restrict access see RBAC documentation.

Step 2/6. Create a certificate/key pair and Teleport Oracle Wallet​

Teleport uses mutual TLS authentication with self-hosted databases. These databases must be configured with Teleport's certificate authority to be able to verify client certificates. They also need a certificate/key pair that Teleport can verify.

To use issue certificates from your workstation with tctl, your Teleport user must be allowed to impersonate the system role Db.

Include the following allow rule in in your Teleport user's role:

allow:
  impersonate:
    users: ["Db"]
    roles: ["Db"]

Follow the instructions below to generate TLS credentials for your database.

Export Teleport's certificate authority and a generated certificate/key pair
for host db.example.com with a 3-month validity period.
tctl auth sign --format=oracle --host=db.example.com --out=server --ttl=2190h

In this example, db.example.com is the hostname where the Teleport Database Service can reach the Oracle server.

TTL

We recommend using a shorter TTL, but keep mind that you'll need to update the database server certificate before it expires to not lose the ability to connect. Pick the TTL value that best fits your use-case.

If tctl finds the Orapki tool in your local environment, the tctl auth sign --format=oracle --host=db.example.com --out=server --ttl=2190h command will produce an Oracle Wallet and instructions how to configure the Oracle TCPS listener with Teleport Oracle Wallet. Otherwise the tctl auth sign --format=oracle command will produce a p12 certificate and instructions on how to create an Oracle Wallet on your Oracle Database instance.

If your Oracle database presents TLS credentials signed by an existing certificate authority, take the following steps instead:

  1. Export a Teleport CA certificate for Oracle to authenticate traffic from the Teleport Database Service. Run the following command on your workstation:

    tctl auth export --type=db-client --auth-server=example.teleport.sh:443 > server.ca-client.crt

  2. Move server.ca-client.crt to a directory in your Oracle server you will use for your Oracle wallet.

  3. Issue a key and certificate in PKCS12 format for the Oracle server and move the resulting P12 file to server.p12 in your Oracle wallet directory.

  4. Use the orapki tool on your Oracle server to set up an Oracle wallet:

    Assign this to your password
    PKCS12_PASS=""
    WALLET_DIR="/path/to/oracleWalletDir"
    orapki wallet create -wallet "$WALLET_DIR" -auto_login_only
    orapki wallet import_pkcs12 -wallet "$WALLET_DIR" -auto_login_only -pkcs12file server.p12 -pkcs12pwd ${PKCS12_PASS?}
    orapki wallet add -wallet "$WALLET_DIR" -trusted_cert -auto_login_only -cert server.ca-client.crt
warning

If copying these files to your Oracle server, ensure the cert file permissions are readable by the oracle user.

Step 3/6. Configure Oracle Database​

In order to enable the Teleport Oracle integration you will need to configure the TCPS Oracle listener and use the Teleport Oracle Wallet created in the previous step.

Align your listener.ora Oracle configuration file and add the following entries:

LISTENER =
  (DESCRIPTION_LIST =
    (DESCRIPTION =
      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCPS)(HOST = 0.0.0.0)(PORT = 2484))
    )
  )

WALLET_LOCATION = (SOURCE = (METHOD = FILE)(METHOD_DATA = (DIRECTORY = /path/to/oracleWalletDir)))
SSL_CLIENT_AUTHENTICATION = TRUE

Additionally, you will need to extend your sqlnet.ora Oracle configuration:

WALLET_LOCATION = (SOURCE = (METHOD = FILE)(METHOD_DATA = (DIRECTORY = /path/to/oracleWalletDir)))
SSL_CLIENT_AUTHENTICATION = TRUE
SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES = (TCPS)
tip

You will need to reload Oracle Listener lsnrctl reload after updating the listener.ora configuration file.

Additionally, your Oracle Database user accounts must be configured to require a valid client certificate. If you're creating a new user:

CREATE USER alice IDENTIFIED EXTERNALLY AS 'CN=alice';
GRANT CREATE SESSION TO alice;

Step 4/6. Configure and Start the Database Service​

Install and configure Teleport where you will run the Teleport Database Service:

To install a Teleport Agent on your Linux server:

The recommended installation method is the cluster install script. It will select the correct version, edition, and installation mode for your cluster.

  1. Assign teleport.example.com:443 to your Teleport cluster hostname and port, but not the scheme (https://).

  2. Run your cluster's install script:

    curl "https://teleport.example.com:443/scripts/install.sh" | sudo bash

On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, start Teleport with the appropriate configuration.

Note that a single Teleport process can run multiple different services, for example multiple Database Service agents as well as the SSH Service or Application Service. The step below will overwrite an existing configuration file, so if you're running multiple services add --output=stdout to print the config in your terminal, and manually adjust /etc/teleport.yaml.

Run the following command to generate a configuration file at /etc/teleport.yaml for the Database Service. Update example.teleport.sh to use the host and port of the Teleport Proxy Service:

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --token=/tmp/token \   --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443 \   --name=oracle \   --protocol=oracle \   --uri=oracle.example.com:2484 \   --labels=env=dev

To configure the Teleport Database Service to trust a custom CA:

  1. Export a CA certificate for the custom CA and make it available at /var/lib/teleport/db.ca on the Teleport Database Service host.

  2. Run a variation of the command above that uses the --ca-cert-file flag. This configures the Teleport Database Service to use the CA certificate at db.ca to verify traffic from the database:

    sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --token=/tmp/token \   --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443 \   --name=oracle \   --protocol=oracle \   --uri=oracle.example.com:2484 \   --ca-cert-file="/var/lib/teleport/db.ca" \   --labels=env=dev

If your database servers use certificates that are signed by a public CA such as ComodoCA or DigiCert, you can use the trust-system-cert-pool option without exporting the CA:

sudo teleport db configure create \   -o file \   --token=/tmp/token \   --proxy=example.teleport.sh:443 \   --name=oracle \   --protocol=oracle \   --uri=oracle.example.com:2484 \   --trust-system-cert-pool \   --labels=env=dev

Configure the Teleport Database Service to start automatically when the host boots up by creating a systemd service for it. The instructions depend on how you installed the Teleport Database Service.

On the host where you will run the Teleport Database Service, enable and start Teleport:

sudo systemctl enable teleport
sudo systemctl start teleport

You can check the status of the Teleport Database Service with systemctl status teleport and view its logs with journalctl -fu teleport.

Tip

A single Teleport process can run multiple services, for example multiple Database Service instances as well as other services such the SSH Service or Application Service.

Step 5/6. (Optional) Configure Teleport to pull audit logs from Oracle Audit Trail​

Teleport can pull audit logs from Oracle Audit Trail. In order to enable this feature, you will need to configure Oracle Audit Trail and create a dedicated Teleport user that will be used to fetch audit events from Oracle Audit Trail.

Create an internal Oracle teleport user that will fetch audit events from Oracle Audit Trail:

CREATE USER teleport IDENTIFIED EXTERNALLY AS 'CN=teleport';
GRANT CREATE SESSION TO teleport;
GRANT SELECT ON SYS.DBA_AUDIT_TRAIL TO teleport;
GRANT SELECT ON SYS.V_$SESSION TO teleport;

Enable the table in Oracle Audit Trail:

ALTER system SET audit_trail=db,extended scope=spfile;

Restart your Oracle instance to propagate audit trail changes.

Enable Oracle auditing for the alice user:

AUDIT ALL STATEMENTS by alice BY access;

You must enable auditing for each Teleport user that will be used to connect to Oracle. Additionally you can create a different audit policy for each user.

Edit the Database Service configuration you created earlier to pull audit logs from the Oracle Audit Trail:

db_service:
  enabled: true
  databases:
  - name: "oracle"
    protocol: "oracle"
    uri: "oracle.example.com:2484"
    oracle:
      audit_user: "teleport"

Teleport doesn't clean up audit trail events from Oracle Audit Trail. Make sure to configure an Oracle Audit Trail cleanup policy to avoid running out of disk space.

Step 6/6. Connect​

Once the Database Service has joined the cluster, log in to see the available databases:

tsh login --proxy=example.teleport.sh --user=alice
tsh db ls
Name   Description    Allowed Users Labels  Connect
------ -------------- ------------- ------- -------
oracle Oracle Example [*]                   env=dev

Connect to the database:

tsh db connect --db-user=alice --db-name=XE oracle
SQLcl: Release 22.4 Production on Fri Mar 31 20:48:02 2023
Copyright (c) 1982, 2023, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 21c Express Edition Release 21.0.0.0.0 - Production
Version 21.3.0.0.0
SQL>

To log out of the database and remove credentials:

Remove credentials for a particular database instance.
tsh db logout oracle
Remove credentials for all database instances.
tsh db logout

(Optional) Configure additional hostnames​

In some deployments the same logical database is reachable via multiple hostnames with different characteristics, for example:

  • replicated databases
  • hostnames that traverse different network paths

If this applies to your setup, list all hosts in order of preference to improve connection resiliency.

If a TCP dial error occurs for a host, the next host in the list is tried automatically. Non-network errors (e.g., certificate or authentication failures) are not retried and do not advance to the next host.

By default, hosts are attempted in the listed order. Retries cycle through the list and wrap to the start as needed (e.g., host1 → host2 → host3 → host1 → ...). To randomize the sequence per connection attempt, set shuffle_hostnames; the same cyclic pattern then applies to that randomized order.

retry_count controls the number of retries per host after the initial attempt on a network error. The default is 2, so there are 3 total attempts per host (1 initial + 2 retries) before moving to the next host in sequence.

This setup supports failover and basic load-balancing for new connections: enabling shuffle_hostnames spreads initial connection attempts across hosts (load-balancing), while retries automatically move to the next host if the current one is unreachable (failover).

- name: oracle
  protocol: oracle
  uri: host1:2484,host2:2484,host3:2484  # Multiple hosts; dials in sequence and wraps (host1 → host2 → host3 → host1 ...). Dialing sequence can be randomized with `shuffle_hostnames`.
  static_labels:
    env: dev
  oracle:
    # Randomize host order per connection attempt to spread load. Optional.
    shuffle_hostnames: true
    # Retries per host on network errors only; non-network errors stop (default: 2). Optional.
    retry_count: 5

Troubleshooting​

Connection hangs or is refused​

A common issue when connecting to an Oracle database is a connection timeout or refusal. This typically indicates a networking problem where the Teleport Database Service cannot reach the Oracle database endpoint. Verify that network routing and access controls, such as firewalls and VPC security groups, allow traffic to flow from the Database Service host to the database endpoint.

You can validate connectivity using a native Oracle client, which helps confirm whether the issue is with Teleport or the underlying network configuration. For example, using Oracle SQLcl:

# Example: Oracle SQLcl
sql -L myuser/[email protected]:2484

Network connectivity issues are often detected by automated health checks.

To check the health status of all registered databases:

# All databases
tctl db ls --format=json | jq -r '.[] | [.metadata.name, .status.target_health]'

An unhealthy database will have output similar to the following:

...
  "oracle",
  {
    "address": "11.22.33.44:2484",
    "protocol": "TCP",
    "status": "unhealthy",
    "transition_timestamp": "2025-09-25T09:47:39.435973Z",
    "transition_reason": "threshold_reached",
    "transition_error": "dial tcp 11.22.33.44:2484: i/o timeout",
    "message": "1 health check failed"
  }
...

TLS negotiation fails​

Properly configuring TLS on an Oracle database can be challenging. Different underlying issues can result in the same error message, such as the following from Teleport:

Original Error: *tls.permanentError remote error: tls: handshake failure

Or you might see the following in the Oracle logs:

ORA-00609: could not attach to incoming connection
ORA-28860: Fatal SSL error

To identify the root cause, follow the debugging steps in the sections below. The output of the following openssl command can help diagnose many common TLS issues. Capture the output and use it as you follow the debugging steps.

> openssl s_client -connect oracle.example.com:2484 -showcerts

Wrong server certificate​

Teleport rejects connections to databases with untrusted server certificates. If you are using Teleport to issue certificates, ensure that the server certificate was issued by the Teleport Database CA. An invalid server certificate will prevent Teleport from establishing a secure connection.

You can view the Teleport Database CA certificate with the following command:

tctl auth export --type=db | openssl x509 -issuer -noout
...
issuer=O=teleport.example.com, CN=teleport.example.com, serialNumber=200129862304303044762346177566738813560

Compare the issuer in the server certificate with the issuer of the Teleport Database CA certificate. The openssl s_client command from the previous section will show you the server certificate:

# openssl s_client output:
...
Server certificate
subject=CN=oracle.example.com
issuer=O=teleport.example.com, CN=teleport.example.com, serialNumber=200129862304303044762346177566738813560
...

You can also inspect the Oracle wallet directly using the orapki utility to verify the server certificate.

# Prompt for wallet password
orapki wallet display -complete -wallet /path/to/wallet

The "User Certificates" section of the output should contain the server's certificate. Its Issuer should match the Subject of the Teleport Database CA.

User Certificates:
Subject:        CN=oracle.example.com
Issuer:         SERIALNUMBER=200129862304303044762346177566738813560,CN=teleport.example.com,O=teleport.example.com
Serial Number:  ...

Wrong client certificate​

If the Oracle server rejects client certificates presented by the Teleport Database Service, you should verify that the Oracle database trusts the Teleport Database User CA.

You can view the Teleport Database User CA with this command:

tctl auth export --type=db-client | openssl x509 -issuer -noout
issuer=O=teleport.example.com, CN=teleport.example.com, serialNumber=183359545647055551607366887578713393931

Compare the Teleport Database User CA with the list of CAs trusted by the Oracle database. The openssl s_client command from earlier will show the list of CAs the Oracle database trusts:

# openssl s_client output:
...
---
Acceptable client certificate CA names
O=teleport.example.com, CN=teleport.example.com, serialNumber=183359545647055551607366887578713393931

Ensure that the Teleport Database User CA certificate has been added to the correct wallet and that the Oracle server configuration references this wallet.

You can also inspect the Oracle wallet directly using the orapki utility to verify that the Teleport Database User CA is trusted.

# Prompt for wallet password
orapki wallet display -complete -wallet /path/to/wallet

The "Trusted Certificates" section of the output should contain the Teleport Database User CA. Its Issuer should match the issuer of the Teleport Database User CA.

Trusted Certificates:
Subject:        SERIALNUMBER=183359545647055551607366887578713393931,CN=teleport.example.com,O=teleport.example.com
Issuer:         SERIALNUMBER=183359545647055551607366887578713393931,CN=teleport.example.com,O=teleport.example.com
Serial Number:  ...

Wrong TLS version​

Teleport rejects connections that use TLS 1.0 or 1.1 due to known weaknesses. Ensure that the SSL_VERSION parameter in your Oracle configuration is set to 1.2 or higher to enable TLS 1.2 or a newer version.

No common cipher suites​

Ensure that the SQLNET.CIPHER_SUITE parameter in your Oracle configuration contains modern TLS cipher suites that match the configured TLS version. The following cipher suites are secure and widely supported across different Oracle versions.

For TLS 1.2:

  • TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
  • TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384

For TLS 1.3:

  • TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
  • TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384

Must be logged on to the server error​

The following error indicates that the login procedure has failed:

ORA-17430: Must be logged on to the server.

This is most commonly caused by the Oracle database enforcing native encryption or data-integrity checksums on a TCPS endpoint. Teleport uses TLS for transport security, and does not support native Oracle encryption.

To disable the redundant encryption requirement for the TCPS endpoint, add the following line to your sqlnet.ora file:

SQLNET.IGNORE_ANO_ENCRYPTION_FOR_TCPS=TRUE

Make sure to use an up-to-date version of the Oracle database. In older versions, this setting may not disable data-integrity checksums, which will lead to continued failures.

Invalid username​

An incorrectly specified username will result in the following error:

ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied

When using TLS-based authentication, Oracle maps the Common Name (CN) from the client certificate to an external user in the database. Verify the EXTERNAL_NAME for your user in the dba_users table. It should be in the format cn=<name>, where <name> matches the value of the --db-user flag used in the tsh db login command.

You can query the dba_users table to check the EXTERNAL_NAME of your users:

SQL> SELECT username, authentication_type, external_name
  2  FROM   dba_users
  3  WHERE  authentication_type = 'EXTERNAL'
  4  ORDER  BY 1;

USERNAME      AUTHENTICATION_TYPE    EXTERNAL_NAME
_____________ ______________________ ________________
ALICE         EXTERNAL               cn=alice

Next steps​

  • Take a look at the YAML configuration reference.