x86_64 startup issues with Oracle 11.2

I started running an Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.6 with an Oracle 11.2 database. When I started the dbca I was hit by this error:

Any ORA-27xxx error looks scary to me but they all seem to boil down to issues with the kernel's semaphore settings. So I opened the sysctl.conf file and to my astonishment found the following:

I changed the kernel.sem line to something more useful with 4 parameters. Running sysctl -p and a restart solved the problem.