If you have the Java OEM client, you can navigate to the: DBNAME Instance Configuration On the "General" tab, it shows the started with SPFILE: /dir/spfilename.ora information for you I am using the 10gR2 OEM Client right now - it does some things more efficiently than the browser based OEM DBCONTROL does. Rick Weiss Oracle Database Administrator Student Assistance Foundation P.O.Box 203101 2500 Broadway Helena, MT 59620-3101 rweiss@xxxxxxxxx (406) 495-7356 >>> "Jesse, Rich" <Rich.Jesse@xxxxxx> 11/28/2006 1:59 PM >>> So, here I am sitting in a developer's class for our new ERP package, and I decided to monitor the 10.2.0.2.0 DB on AIX 5.3 that all the dev's individual JBoss servers are hammering. The first thing I noticed is that the buffer cache appears to be a whopping 16MB. Hmmm...I could have sworn that I set that higher. And I did. The init.ora shows db_cache_size to be "50MB" and log_buffer to be "524288". sga_target is unset and is "0" according to V$PARAMETER. The init.ora file is dated November 5th, and V$INSTANCE shows that it's been up and running since the 9th. There is no spfile (on purpose). Attempts to increase db_cache_size fail, like one would expect with the default sga_max_size. Confucious. There's some things in this database that are out of my control (despite my protests), but I don't see how this scenario could happen from within the DB. The only thing I can think of is that the instance was started with an SPFILE and that file has since been deleted, but I'm not sure how to prove this. Thoughts? Rich -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l