[CentOS] best practises for avoiding to write passwords in shell scripts (example sqlplus from Oracle)

Tue Dec 1 21:48:44 UTC 2009
Sven Aluoor <aluoor at gmail.com>

Hi folks

I have here a CentOS box where i need to setup cronjob (with session
to remote Oracle instance). On the remote DB i have no access, expect
limited user.

How to avoid putting passwords in shell scripts?

The solution doesn't need to be perfect, only better than plain text
passwords in scripts.
Mostly remote host only support password authentication (no
certificates and so on).

cheers
Sven