When the collector starts it connects to the Oracle SGA. In order to connect to the SGA, Precise for Oracle uses the Shared Memory information returned by the OS ipcs command. If there is no data returned, the collector will not be able to connect to the Oracle SGA and will not start. This is how Precise for Oracle is built, and has always worked this way.
If the result of ipcs -m is empty when running from root, it indicates something is wrong and must be fixed. It may not affect other applications or Oracle functionality itself, but it is affecting Precise.