sysctl.conf file not being read at bootup?

[Dave Martini]

I have an RHEL WS 4.0 host.

I'm setting the kernel parameters for Oracle in /etc/sysctl.conf.

When I reboot the machine the parameters never get set to what I've 
specified in my /etc/sysctl.conf file. Is there a reason for this?
Notice the net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range is set to 65000 in sysctl.conf 
but after rebooting shows 61000. And the 3rd. value of kernel.sem is set 
to 100 in sysctl.conf but shows 32 after reboot.
Thank You.
Dave Martini
LLNL

# more /etc/sysctl.conf
# Kernel sysctl configuration file for Red Hat Linux
#
# For binary values, 0 is disabled, 1 is enabled.  See sysctl(8) and
# sysctl.conf(5) for more details.

# Controls IP packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

# Controls source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# Do not accept source routing
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0

# Controls the System Request debugging functionality of the kernel
kernel.sysrq = 0

# Controls whether core dumps will append the PID to the core filename.
# Useful for debugging multi-threaded applications.
kernel.core_uses_pid = 1
kernel.shmmax = 536870912
kernel.sem 250  32000   100     128
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range 32768 65000
net.core.rmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.rmem_max = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 262144

AFTER REBOOT

security]# sysctl -a |grep sem
kernel.sem = 250        32000   32      128


security]# sysctl -a |grep ip_local_port_range
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 32768    61000