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Solution for ORA-27154: post/wait create failed ; ORA-27302: failure occurred at: sskgpbitsper

Posted by Kamran Agayev A. on June 21st, 2019

Today, while creating an empty database in Exadata machine where there was enough free space and memory, we got the following error:

SYS@TEST> startup nomount
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: sskgpbitsper

 

The problem wasn’t related with the space at all, even from the error message we see “No space left on device”.

From the error output, I realized “OS system dependent operation:semget“, where “sem” means “semaphore“. Having enough free memory and space, the process couldn’t allocate necessary semaphore, either because of the kernel parameter wasn’t configured correctly, or all memory is occupied. To get information about semaphores and shared memory, I ran ipcs command:

[oracle@node2~]$ ipcs
------ Shared Memory Segments --------
key shmid owner perms bytes nattch status 
0x00000000 0 root 644 64 2 dest 
0x00000000 32769 root 644 16384 2 dest 
0x00000000 65538 root 644 280 2 dest 
0x00000000 98307 root 644 80 2 
0x00000000 131076 root 644 16384 2 
0x00000000 163845 root 644 280 2 
0x00000000 262602758 oracle 640 4096 0
------ Semaphore Arrays --------
key semid owner perms nsems 
0x61000625 98306 root 666 1 
0x00000000 163844 root 666 3 
0x00000000 1769477 root 666 3 
0x00000000 4096006 root 666 3 
0xd9942a14 3604487 oracle 600 514 
0xd9942a15 3637256 oracle 600 514 
0xd9942a16 3670025 oracle 600 514 
0x192b36e8 219578379 oracle 640 1004 
0x5f94bc50 6062092 oracle 640 1004 
0x00000000 286752781 root 666 3 
0xaa3762f4 6324238 oracle 640 154

 

The list was long, so I decided to count the rows

[oracle@node2 ~]$ ipcs -s | wc -l
256

 

So overall I have 256 semaphores allocated. Then I checked /etc/sysctl.conf file for the KERNEL.SEM parameter:

[oracle@node2 ~]$ more /etc/sysctl.conf | grep sem
kernel.sem = 1024 60000 1024 256
[oracle@node2 ~]$

You can get more detailed output from ipcs -ls command as follows:

 

[oracle@node2 ~]$ ipcs -ls
------ Semaphore Limits --------
max number of arrays = 256
max semaphores per array = 1024
max semaphores system wide = 60000
max ops per semop call = 1024
semaphore max value = 32767

 

The last column indicates the maximum number of semaphore sets for the entire OS. In this case you have to options to solve the problem:

  • Increase the max number of arrays parameter in the /etc/sysctl.conf file
  • Remove unnecessary semaphores

 

Increasing max number of arrays parameter is the easiest (and the fastest) way. Here how it works:

 

1. Get the value for the SEM parameter:

[root@node2 ~]# cat /etc/sysctl.conf | grep sem
kernel.sem = 1024 60000 1024 256
[root@node2 ~]#

2. Edit it and change it to 260 (more than the value you get from ” ipcs -s | wc -l” command) and run the following command to set the parameter to be persistent

/sbin/sysctl -p

3. Create a dummy parameter file and start the instance in NOMOUNT mode to see if the oracle user can get a semaphore from the memory:

[oracle@node2 dbs] mode initTEST.ora
db_name=TEST
sga_size=2g

 

[oracle@node2 ~] export ORACLE_SID=TEST
[oracle@node2 ~] sqlplus / as sysdba
SYS@TEST> startup nomount
ORACLE instance started.
Total System Global Area 2137886720 bytes
Fixed Size 2254952 bytes
Variable Size 956303256 bytes
Database Buffers 1090519040 bytes
Redo Buffers 88809472 bytes
SYS@TEST>

 

It worked!

 

The second option to solve the problem, is to find out the ‘aged’ semaphores from the memory and remove them. Each semaphore is linked to the PID in the OS. In the following example I have overall 256 semaphores where 23 of them are related with oracle user (db instances etc.) and 229 of them related with root user. Most processes that hold the semaphore in the memory died long time ago, but semaphores didn’t age out. To find and kill the PID of the semaphore, we run ipcs command with -i parameter. First let’s get list of semaphores under oracle user and check one of them as follows:

[root@node2 ~]# ipcs -s | grep oracle 
0xcfe88130 3473414 oracle 600 514 
0xcfe88131 3506183 oracle 600 514 
0xcfe88132 3538952 oracle 600 514 
0xf0720010 411041803 oracle 640 802 
0xf8121f34 145653772 oracle 640 1004 
0xf0720011 411074573 oracle 640 802 
0xf0720012 411107342 oracle 640 802 
0xc5d91710 196444189 oracle 640 504 
0x86d48ae8 44236836 oracle 640 304 
0x67556608 199786542 oracle 640 876 
0x67556609 199819311 oracle 640 876 
0x6755660a 199852080 oracle 640 876 
0x6755660b 199884849 oracle 640 876 
0x6755660c 199917618 oracle 640 876 
0x806b87cc 157450352 oracle 640 752 
0x806b87cd 157483121 oracle 640 752 
0x806b87ce 157515892 oracle 640 752 
[root@node2 ~]#

 

Next, we run ipcs command with -i parameter to get the list of PIDs as follows:

[root@node2 ~]# ipcs -s -i 157450352 | more

Semaphore Array semid=157450352
uid=1001 gid=1002 cuid=1001 cgid=1002
mode=0640, access_perms=0640
nsems = 752
otime = Fri Jun 21 18:51:23 2019 
ctime = Fri Jun 21 18:51:23 2019 
semnum value ncount zcount pid 
0 1 0 0 315611 
1 4893 0 0 315611 
2 10236 0 0 315611 
3 32760 0 0 315611 
4 0 0 0 0 
5 0 0 0 0 
6 0 0 0 315729 
7 0 1 0 315731 
8 0 0 0 0 
9 0 1 0 315739 
10 0 0 0 0 
11 0 1 0 315743 
12 0 0 0 315745 
13 0 1 0 315747 
14 0 1 0 315749

 

Next, we run ps command and check the PID:

[root@node2 ~]# ps -fp 315729
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
oracle 315729 1 0 2018 ? 01:14:13 ora_pmon_SNEWDB
[root@node2 ~]#

 

As you see, we found out that the specific semaphore is associated with the database instance. Now let’s repeat the same steps for the semaphores of the root user:

[oracle@node2 ~]$ ipcs -s |grep root
0x61000625 98306 root 666 1
0x00000000 163844 root 666 3
0x00000000 1769477 root 666 3
0x00000000 4096006 root 666 3
0x00000000 248774666 root 666 3
0x00000000 286752781 root 666 3
0x00000000 6357007 root 666 3

 

Now we run ipcs -s -i command for the semaphore which is marked in bold to find the PID :

[oracle@node2 ~]$ ipcs -s -i 248774666
Semaphore Array semid=248774666
uid=0 gid=11140 cuid=0 cgid=11140
mode=0666, access_perms=0666
nsems = 3
otime = Sun Dec 16 18:34:22 2018
ctime = Sun Dec 16 18:34:22 2018
semnum value ncount zcount pid
0 1024 0 0 156155
1 32000 0 0 156155
2 0 0 0 156155

 

If we check the PID in the system, we see that it’s not available:

[oracle@node2 ~]$ ps -fp 156155
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
[oracle@node2 ~]$

 

Now we can safely remove that semaphore from the memory using ipcrm command in order to release space for new semaphores:

[root@node2 ~]# ipcrm -s 248774666
[root@node2 ~]#
Let's check if it was removed:
[root@node2 ~]# ipcrm -s 248774666
ipcrm: invalid id (248774666)
[root@node2 ~]#

 

As you see, we found out the semaphores which associated process is not available in the system, and removed it to make space for new semaphores. Now let’s start the instance:

SYS@TEST> startup nomount
ORACLE instance started.
Total System Global Area 2137886720 bytes
Fixed Size 2254952 bytes
Variable Size 956303256 bytes
Database Buffers 1090519040 bytes
Redo Buffers 88809472 bytes
SYS@TEST>

 

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