Check out MetaLink note #6224.1 (entitled "Alert: Sparse files and Oracle"). It should explain the basic situation. For what it might be worth, I've attached a script that I use for detecting file-systems that are "oversubscribed" due to the use of "sparsely-populated files" with Oracle tempfiles. No warranty -- your mileage may vary... on 5/29/05 8:52 PM, Herring Dave - dherri at Dave.Herring@xxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Has anyone had an issue with MAX* columns within DBA_TEMP_FILES being > wrong? > > > I've got one temp tablespace, type temporary, defined for all users and > the default at the database level (9.2.0.4 on Tru64). This temp > tablespace has 6 tempfiles defined, each created with a maxsize of > 40,001M (see results of an 'ls -l' below): -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l