Oracle processes under UNIX

I am running CCI's UNIX v 3.11.02 on a Power 6. We are using oracle version 6.0.31 and we are using the default (pipe) driver.

Initially we encountered a fork failure/too many processes error, which we attributed to having MAXPROC set at 25. I should also add that this machine also runs an office automation package as well as acting as an Oracle host.

We have increased MAXPROC to 50, and our init.ora processes parameter is also 50. Our problem is that we are having a hard time convincing ourselves that we have solved the problem. We *can*not* get rid of the office automation package users. Are we tweaking the right parameter? Is there any thing else we can do? *any* assistance would be greatly appreciated!!!

One of our database people fired up 50 sqlplus sessions (via entering sqlplus, then issuing a HOST command, then firing up another sqlplus session from *that* shell), and *that* stopped when he got to 50 processes. Oracle, at that point, had over 90 processes running (including drivers, background processes, etc.). What gives? Is MAXPROC a "warm fuzzy" parameter that the user can fiddle with, but really does nothing? Are we interpreting things wrong?

Thanks in Advance
John Deighan and Marc Dumond

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