I recieved this error when I bumped up the processes to 500 from 250. There is one other database on the server with processes set a 200. The /etc/system parameters are: set semsys:seminfo_semmap=0x13d set semsys:seminfo_semmnu=0x13d set semsys:seminfo_semmns=1317 set semsys:seminfo_semmni=312 set semsys:seminfo_semmsl=429 I set the processes to 300 and the database was able to start. So with that in mind going by Oracle's formula for setting semmns, (500 + 200) + 500 + (10 *2) = 1220. So techinally I should not be running into this error based on this criteria. Does Oracle also look at semmsl or semmni? This is a Sun Solaris server. Thanks in advance, Rich -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l