ORA-27154: post/wait create failed / ORA-27301: OS failure message: No space left on device when starting ASM or database instance

Today i came accross a very strange error. After rebooting one cluster node (which ran flawlessly before!) ASM instance came up fine but database instance failed with:

ORA-27154: post/wait create failed
ORA-27300: OS system dependent operation:semget failed with status: 28
ORA-27301: OS failure message: No space left on device
ORA-27302: failure occurred at: sskgpsemsper

It turned out the kernel settings were insufficent. The semaphore settings caused problems.

In /etc/sysctl.conf:

kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128

This line needs to be changed to:

kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 256

Note the change of the last number from 128 to 256. After that applying the settings is done as root with:

sysctl -p

After that all instances came up just fine.

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16 Responses to ORA-27154: post/wait create failed / ORA-27301: OS failure message: No space left on device when starting ASM or database instance

  1. santosh says:

    Thanks.. this worked for me.

  2. Mehmet Tufekcioglu says:

    Thank you! It has worked for me too!

  3. Milind says:

    It could be due to the number of processes in initialization parameter files

  4. Pingback: » Oracle: semget failed! PSST0101

  5. StanJ says:

    And it worked for me too!!! Thanks Ronny!

  6. Rod says:

    Worked Thanks!

  7. Dipendra says:

    Thanks it works for me too..

  8. Bob says:

    Ronny, you are my hero! Worked for me too

  9. Anonymous says:

    Thank u Ronny , U R My Hero!!!

  10. Sridhar says:

    Hi Ronny,

    I was facing similar issue. Increasing the sysctl value to higher helped. Thanks a lot for sharing the information.

  11. latinmau says:

    GRacias, funciono para mi :)… me salvo el pellejo jejejeje

  12. Anonymous says:

    I love you, Google and Ronny!
    It’s worked.

  13. Anonymous says:

    Thanks that worked for me as well!!!

  14. Rahul says:

    Awesome work man.. i guess “runfix.sh” script does the same at the time of installation ;).. appreciate ur talent.. :) thanks alot man @@@@

  15. Roger says:

    Thanks very much. It’s worked for me too.
    But could you please explain these parameters?

  16. Cristhiano says:

    Thank you very much! It worked for me too!

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