Strange buffer resizing in 10gR2

So, here I am sitting in a developer's class for our new ERP package, and I decided to monitor the 10.2.0.2.0 DB on AIX 5.3 that all the dev's individual JBoss servers are hammering. The first thing I noticed is that the buffer cache appears to be a whopping 16MB. Hmmm...I could have sworn that I set that higher. And I did.

The init.ora shows db_cache_size to be "50MB" and log_buffer to be "524288". sga_target is unset and is "0" according to V$PARAMETER. The init.ora file is dated November 5th, and V$INSTANCE shows that it's been up and running since the 9th. There is no spfile (on purpose). Attempts to increase db_cache_size fail, like one would expect with the default sga_max_size.

Confucious. There's some things in this database that are out of my control (despite my protests), but I don't see how this scenario could happen from within the DB. The only thing I can think of is that the instance was started with an SPFILE and that file has since been deleted, but I'm not sure how to prove this.

Thoughts?

Rich

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