Database startup can fail with ORA-00064 Errors with huge sga_target of over 40Gig (Doc ID 886312.

1)
Modified: Mar 7, 2012 Type: PROBLEM
In this Document
Symptoms
Changes
Cause
Solution
References
APPLIES TO:
Oracle Server - Enterprise Edition - Version: 10.2.0.4 to 11.2.0.3 - Release: 10.2 to 11.2
This problem can occur on any platform.
SYMPTOMS
Attempting to start the database with SGA_TARGET of 100GB (with a total of about 500GB of physical memory available) can fail with:
ORA-00064: object is too large to allocate on this O/S (1,15429280)
CHANGES
The SGA_TARGET instance parameter has been dynamically increased to a value higher than 40GB, like in:
SQL> alter system set sga_target=100G;
SQL> shutdown
SQL> startup
ORA-00064: object is too large to allocate on this O/S (1,15429280)
CAUSE
The cause of this problem has been identified in Bug:5051962, which has been closed as not-a-bug. It is caused by the granule size
needed for the new SGA size to be different than the one currently in use by the instance at the time the ALTER SYSTEM SET
SGA_TARGET command is run.
SOLUTION
This is expected behaviour: the granule size is set based on the size of the SGA. If you set a SGA parameter (such as SGA_TARGET) to
a value which exceeds the value of the granule size that was calulcated at instance startup, then you must set the _ksmg_granule_size
instance parameter as well to choose a larger granule size. As this parameter is not dynamically changeable, an instance restart is
required.
The following table, shows granule sizes for specific SGA sizes and releases of Oracle:
SGA size 10g granule size 11g granule size 11g
granule
size
with fix
8813366
installed
<= 1GB 4MB 4MB 4MB
1GB - 4GB 16MB 16MB 16MB
4GB - 8GB 16MB 64MB 16MB
8GB - 16GB 16MB 64MB 32MB
16GB - 32GB 16MB 256MB 64MB
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32GB - 64GB 16MB 256MB 128MB
64GB - 128GB 16MB 512MB 256MB
128GB - 256GB 16MB 512MB 512MB
> 256GB 16MB 512MB 512MB
See also document:947152.1 for details on the granule size and its impact.
The following SQL statement can be used to check the actual granule size in use by the instance:
SQL> select bytes from v$sgainfo where name like 'Granule Size';
So in order to implement the solution for the issue at hand, either:
set SGA_TARGET to a value less than or equal to the previous one, or: 1.
set _ksmg_granule_size to a higher value (in this case the value was set to 32MB). When using a text parameter file, add the
following parameter:
_ksmg_granule_size=33554432
When using a server parameter file, issue:
alter system set "_ksmg_granule_size"=33554432 scope=spfile;
In either case, restart the instance for the changes to take effect.
2.
REFERENCES
BUG:5051962 - ORA-64 OBJECT IS TOO LARGE TO ALLOCATE ON THIS O/S (1,4740456)
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