Re: open files

[Adam Tauno Williams <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoting Wesley Leonard <marshall@pacdemon.org>:

> I remember a while ago someone mentioned how to change the number of
> open files that linux can have...  I searched the archive but couldn't
> locate it.
> 
> Could someone please share this information?

cat /proc/sys/kernel/file-max

Usually, by default the limit is 1024 (WAY TO LOW!!!)  Not uncommon for a single
app or service to want to open more than 1024 files.

The rationale is that the libc call "select()" can only select on 1024 handles
(globally I think) do to some arbitrary limitation.  There are several ways
around this problem (and most Linux-native programs use them) but a program that
hasn't been maintained since 2.0.x or one ported from another platform like
Solaris (where apparently in some versions the 1k file descriptor limit is
carved in stone) will puke if you get to far away from this.

Default max per process is usually 256

See 
http://www.kalamazoolinux.org/presentations/19991221/img5.htm
http://www.kalamazoolinux.org/presentations/19991221/img15.htm
http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html#limits.filehandles
http://kernelnotes.org/lnxlists/linux-kernel/lk_9909_02/msg01092.html
http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/35/1999/3/0/1442099/

Systems and Network Administrator
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