is a vfs limit?

[Steven W. Orr]

On Wednesday, Feb 11th 2009 at 13:14 -0000, quoth Sharpe, Sam J:

=>2009/2/11 iarly selbir <iarlyy at gmail.com>:
=>> can anyone tell me what mean this messages?
=>>
=>> Feb 11 14:08:02 ski0s kernel: VFS: file-max limit 204674 reached
=>
=>You've probably hit the maximum number of open files.
=>
=>[sjs298 at cc-6910p ~]$ sysctl fs.file-max
=>fs.file-max = 202566
=>
=>[sjs298 at cc-6910p ~]$ sudo sysctl -w fs.file-max=1000000
=>fs.file-max = 1000000
=>
=>[sjs298 at cc-6910p ~]$ sysctl fs.file-max
=>fs.file-max = 1000000
=>
=>To make the changes permanent, you need to add a line to /etc/sysctl.conf:
=>fs.file-max = <a number>
=>
=>Shells also have a maximum number of open files which may need to be
=>adjusted in /etc/security/limits.conf, but I don't think you are
=>hitting that because the message wouldn't come from the kernel.

Sorry, but I don't believe that is correct. VFS has no knowledge of the 
number of open files on the system. I think it's trying to tell you that 
you have run out of either the maximum number of files allowe3d in the 
filesystem or the maximum number of blocks allowed by a single file in 
the filesystem.

I don't know what kind of filesystem you're running and I don't know why 
the complaint is coming from VFS so I can't really help you, other than to 
say that (for example) ext[23] allows you to specify the number of 
files/inodes/etc in a filesystem. I also don't remember if you can change 
any of it after the filesystem is populated.

FYI, VFS == Virtual File System. It's the dohicky that allows things like 
open, close, read, write and ls(1) to all present you with a unified view 
of your filesystem, regardless of whether you're running ext2, ext3, 
reiser, jfs, xfs, or whatever flavor you have that day, or whatever 
combination of filesystems you're running.

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