Fixing ORA-00838: Specified value of MEMORY_TARGET is too small

I had an interesting surprise today as I restarted the VM I'm using to run through the 2 Day DBA online tutorial Oracle offer and i hit this error...

SQL> startup

ORA-00838: Specified value of MEMORY_TARGET is too small, needs to be at least 1172M

After a quick google,, it seems this configuration option lives in the spfile which can't be directly edited. The way to change settings is to export the spfile into a pfile, edit it, and then re-import the settings.

SQL> create pfile='/tmp/pfile.backup' from spfile;

File created.

From another session, alter the setting from the bad value to the value recommended. In my case this bad setting was set as *.memory_target=536870912. Doing the maths on the 1172M returned by the error message it needs to be  1172*1024*1024 = 1228931072.

-bash-4.1$ vi /tmp/pfile.backup

*.memory_target=1228931072

Startup sqlplus, and re-import the pfile settings into the spfile

SQL> create spfile from pfile='/tmp/pfile.backup';

File created.

In my case, whatever had happened, this needed adjusting again - it recommends a new value again.

SQL> startup

ORA-00838: Specified value of MEMORY_TARGET is too small, needs to be at least 1240M

So, repeat the process again, 1240*1024*1024 = 1300234240

-bash-4.1$ vi /tmp/pfile.backup

*.memory_target=1300234240

Fire up sqlplus again...

SQL> create spfile from pfile='/tmp/pfile.backup';

File created.

SQL> startup

ORACLE instance started.

Total System Global Area  534462464 bytes

Fixed Size                  2212736 bytes

Variable Size             524291200 bytes

Database Buffers            4194304 bytes

Redo Buffers                3764224 bytes

Database mounted.

Database opened.