Re: 10G - editing SPFILE

Charlie Edwards wrote:

> I had 8i running fine on my PC (XP home).
> I loaded SP2 and hey presto - it doesn't work.
>
> No problem, a good opportunity to load up 10G
>
> But it eats memory like anything, so I decide to lower the sga_target.
> Trouble is now I get:
>
> "Specified value of sga_target is too small, needs to be at least 24M"
>
> and I can't edit the SPFILE manually as Oracle won't start complaining
> it's corrupt or something.
>
> So have i got to reinstall, or what. And are there any tips on how I
> can minimise the memory requirements (till i buy some more). I don't
> want anything fancy, just the database.
>
> Cheers
>
> CE

At the command prompt, you'd type:

sqlplus /nolog
connect / as sysdba
create pfile from spfile;

(And that last command needs no instance running to work).

This will produce you a regular old text-file initXXX.ora in ORACLE_HOME\databases. Edit that to put your SGA settings back to something sensible, and then:

sqlplus /nolog
connect / as sysdba
create spfile from pfile;

This over-writes your dodgy spfile with a revised, clean one that matches the contents of your edited init.ora. Then you can just say 'startup'.

Two other things. You shouldn't run on XP Home, because Oracle's not certified for it. And secondly, if you felt compelled to reduce your SGA to less than 24MB, then I can safely assume that you are really short of memory on that PC. I'd strongly recommend going out and buying more RAM, therefore. Even 24MB is uttlerly anaemic.

Obviously, we all live with the hardware we have to hand. But in the long term, definitely aim for a machine with at least 512MB of RAM, preferably more. Buy a slower processor if you have to, but memory is key.

Regards
HJR Received on Wed Oct 20 2004 - 15:54:57 CDT