Originally posted by OracleDoc
You know this is pretty good comedy between this thread and that Ora-600 thread, the office is getting a pretty good chuckle out of this.

Ok look (Reydp) there is no spfile in 8i only in 9i and above. At the command prompt when the database is down you type in create spfile from pfile. Once that spfile is created Oracle will automatically use that instead of the init.ora. Therefore making it possible to change things dynamically.
The original poster(ptrieves) originally ask the init.ora file for his 9i db because he have something to alter one/more of the parameters. Even if he can successfully start the db with the new init.ora file, he could be wondering later-on when he stops and starts the db if the init.ora that he made take effect. That is why I did advancely inform him to create spfile.
I was not talking about the dynamic parameters that could be change even the db is alive.