Cry about...
Oracle Troubleshooting

ORA-01004: default username feature not supported

Symptom:

When attempting to log in without supplying a password (i.e. intending to use operating system authentication) the following error is encountered:

ORA-01004: default username feature not supported; logon denied

Possible Causes and Remedies:

• Operating system authentication has not been enabled for the system.
  • Check ‘{ORACLE_HOME} \ NET80 \ ADMIN \ SQLNET.ORA’ on both client and server. To enable operating system authentication it should contain the line:

    SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES = (NTS)

• If the registry key ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ ORACLE \ OSAUTH_ENFORCE_STRICT’ is set (true) then verify that the user is a member of one of the following NT groups: ORA_<SID>_USER, ORA_<SID>_DBA, ORA_<SID>_OPER, ORA_USER, ORA_DBA or ORA_OPER.
• If the Oracle database is in a different domain from the logon domain then a trust relationship must be set-up between the two domains for operating system authentication to work.
• The system does not support operating system authentication. The error may in this case be accompanied by the error ‘ORA-01988: remote os login is not allowed’. Log on supplying password and username.

This page represents one page of many pages of notes I made whilst working with Oracle 7 through to 10i. I now no longer work with Oracle databases, but hope that these notes will continue to be of benefit to others.