Bug: /def/shm does not use /etc/fstab attributes after reboot

SOLVED: this issue is solved in Linux 6.4 (kernel: 2.6.39-400.17.1.el6uek and 2.6.32-358.el6).
A single entry in /etc/fstab like [tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs size=3g 0 0] now works as it should!

There is a bug in Red Hat Linux 6 and Oracle Enterprise Linux 6 (UEK and RHEL-kernel) and probably all other Red Hat 6 related Linux Distro’s.

When you need more memory for SGA/PGA when using MEMORY_MAX_TARGET, you need to resize /dev/shm. By default this is 50% of total memory and Oracle tells you to add the following to /etc/fstab, ‘mounting’ the /dev/shm twice (?):

tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs size=3g 0 0

Which works…

IMPORTANT NOTE: make sure the first field (fs_spec) ‘shmfs’ or ‘tmpfs’ gets the same name as the already existing ‘defaults’ name. So if you have a line [tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0], make sure the ‘overruled’ line also starts with ‘tmpfs’: [tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs size=3g 0 0].

If not, a `mount -a` will un-mount (!!!) the ‘shmfs’ and remount ‘tmpfs’, this results in immediate clearing the ‘/dev/shm’ memory and all your SGA is instantly gone! Running this when databases are running, your databases with AMM will crash! This ‘issue’ is still there last time checked in Linux 7.3. In Oracle documentation about /dev/shm, the first field is ‘shmfs’ with can result in crashing databases when a `mount -a` done!

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Oracle 11g AMM: MEMORY_TARGET, MEMORY_MAX_TARGET and /dev/shm

I knew in Oracle 11g with Automatic Memory Management (AMM), the database was able to give unused memory back to the OS, controlled by MEMORY_TARGET and MEMORY_MAX_TARGET.

This mechanism is present in 11g since day 1 (in 2007), but I never actually played with it.

MEMORY_TARGET and MEMORY_MAX_TARGET

The Oracle documents state the following:

MEMORY_TARGET specifies the Oracle system-wide usable memory.
MEMORY_MAX_TARGET (…) decide on a maximum amount of memory that you would want to allocate to the database for the foreseeable future.

So my guess is, MEMORY_MAX_TARGET (static) is the maximum you can set MEMORY_TARGET (dynamic) to. A couple of days ago, I wanted to experiment a bit with these memory settings.

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