Oracle and raw devices on Linux don't work :-(

it seems I can't get Oracle to work with raw devices on Linux and would appreciate any help.

I installed Oracle with raw device support, but generated all the system tables in regular files in the file system (I thought mixing regular files and raw devices for different table spaces should be possible and seemed easier to set up). Then I bound /dev/raw5 to /dev/sdb9, but when I try to create a tablespace on the raw device I get:

  SVRMGR> create tablespace "DATA" datafile '/dev/raw5';   create tablespace "DATA" datafile '/dev/raw5'   *
  ORA-01119: error in creating database file '/dev/raw5'   ORA-27059: skgfrsz: could not reduce file size   Additional information: 2

The use of "reuse" doesn't seem to help:   

  SVRMGR> create tablespace "DATA" datafile '/dev/raw5' reuse;   create tablespace "DATA" datafile '/dev/raw5' reuse   *
  ORA-01119: error in creating database file '/dev/raw5'   ORA-27059: skgfrsz: could not reduce file size   Additional information: 2

Any hints on what I should do to get it running or what Oracle actually requires from the raw device to work?

My environment ist:
- SuSE Linux 6.0 (I know this is old, but I have to use this version
  for a performance comparison of a colleagues work)
- Oracle8 Release 8.0.5.0.0 - Production
  (At least that's what svrmgrl prints on startup.)
- Linux kernel 2.4.3

  (I also tried 2.4.18)

My Background: I'm not a database expert, but I'm doing research on distributed file systems.

Regards,
Felix

-- 
Felix Rauch, research assistant at laboratory for computersystems, ETH Zuerich
http://www.nice.ch/~felix/    Member of Swiss Internet User Group: www.siug.ch
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