10g Universal Installer kernel errors while installing on Solaris 5.10

Question

Hi all,
I have been trying to install Oracle 10g on a Solaris 5.10 machine (32-bit) as per the official Oracle Documentation for a couple of days now. It seems that the Universal Installer fails it's pre-installation steps and throws up error at the following kernel parameters:
Checking for shmsys:shminfo_shmmax=4294967295; found no entry. Failed <<<<
Checking for shmsys:shminfo_shmmni=100; found no entry. Failed <<<<
Checking for semsys:seminfo_semmni=100; found no entry. Failed <<<<
Checking for semsys:seminfo_semmsl=256; found no entry. Failed <<<<
Check complete. The overall result of this check is: Failed <<<<
I have followed the Oracle Documentation which says to change the kernel parameters using the resource control facility. For this I already have a project "oracle" which the user "oracle" has been assigned to:
$ id -ap oracle
uid=100(oracle) gid=100(oinstall) groups=100(oinstall),101(dba) projid=100(oracle)
Following are the snapshots from the prctl command on the current state of the kernel paramters:
For Checking for shmsys:shminfo_shmmax=4294967295; found no entry. Failed <<<<
$ prctl -n project.max-shm-memory -i project oracle
project: 100: oracle
NAME PRIVILEGE VALUE FLAG ACTION RECIPIENT
project.max-shm-memory
privileged 254MB - deny -
system 16.0EB max deny -
The Oracle recommended value is 4GB - I expect Universal Installer check to fail for this, so I change the parameter using the resource control facility by logging in as root in a new terminal and keeping one oracle session active.
# prctl -n project.max-shm-memory -v 4gb -r -i project oracle
I can see that the parameter has been set correctly when I do:
$ prctl -n project.max-shm-memory -i project oracle
project: 100: oracle
NAME PRIVILEGE VALUE FLAG ACTION RECIPIENT
project.max-shm-memory
privileged 4.00GB - deny -
system 16.0EB max deny -
For Checking for semsys:seminfo_semmni=100; found no entry. Failed <<<<
$ prctl -n project.max-sem-ids -i project oracle
project: 100: oracle
NAME PRIVILEGE VALUE FLAG ACTION RECIPIENT
project.max-sem-ids
privileged 128 - deny -
system 16.8M max deny -
The Oracle recommended value is 100 - I do not expect Universal Installer check to fail at this parameter
For Checking for shmsys:shminfo_shmmni=100; found no entry. Failed <<<<
$ prctl -n project.max-shm-ids -i project oracle
project: 100: oracle
NAME PRIVILEGE VALUE FLAG ACTION RECIPIENT
project.max-shm-ids
privileged 128 - deny -
system 16.8M max deny -
The Oracle recommended value is 100 - I do not expect Universal Installer check to fail at this parameter
Also when I try to issue the command:
$ prctl -n project.max-sem-nsems -i project oracle
I get:
prctl: failed to get resource control for project.max-sem-nsems: Invalid argument
Oracle recommends I should set a value of 256.
After setting up all this I still get the following errors from Universal Installer:
Checking for shmsys:shminfo_shmmax=4294967295; found no entry. Failed <<<<
Checking for shmsys:shminfo_shmmni=100; found no entry. Failed <<<<
Checking for semsys:seminfo_semmni=100; found no entry. Failed <<<<
Checking for semsys:seminfo_semmsl=256; found no entry. Failed <<<<
Check complete. The overall result of this check is: Failed <<<<
Now when I modify the kernel settings by editing the /etc/system file without even a reboot I'm can see all my Universal Installer Kernel checks as passed.
Not sure if I'm missing out some crucial step while setting up the kernel parameter using the resource control facility?
~ Somjit

Answer 1

It is bug in OUI.
OUI is looking at /etc/system to check the kernel parameter settings, but this file is not used (by default) in Solaris 10
It should check the kernel parameter settings using the prctl.
Check metalink note 363436.1
workaround is to
./runInstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs
or as You already did, change /etc/system as well.