Hi,
I tried to look into Redhat documentation but could not find much about SHMALL parameter. I am experiencing database related issues like startup a database initially works but fails when try to bring it after some time. It just hangs even before starting SGA. I noticed a large SHMALL values in the system which is something like 4GB instead of 2MB recommended by oracle. at that time load goes crazy and all CPUs 100% utilized by system.
Please let me know if you ever had similar issues.

Thanks

Perhaps this article may be helpful, good luck with it either way. -- J.W.

Thanks for the link. I changed the kernel parameters per oracle recommendations. I am still running into the same issue after couple of days. We have mutliple databases on this machine and we bring them up and down when needed. None of them have SGA more than 1GB and there is about 12GB Physical memory in the system. It still fails to startup the third or fourth database after couple of days. everything works if you just reboot the server. Its strange to me and I feel like all the memory getting locked up by kernel and not released for oracle to startup the SGA.