Too many open files in system

[Ed Greshko]

On Fri, 2004-09-24 at 00:52, Steve Buehler wrote:
> 	I am getting a lot of messages about Too many open files in system.  I am 
> running RHEL 3.x on a dual Xeon 2.4Ghz with 2Gig of ram.  The only thing 
> really different from the average system is that we are running an Ensim 
> Control panel and this normally happens when we are doing backups.  But we 
> have other systems like this and don't have this problem.  Also, I know 
> that there are other people out there running this with more than the 185 
> sites that we have on this server.  Now I do agree that a couple of our 
> sites get more hits than a lot of the other servers that are out there with 
> this type of setup.  But they are only averaging (each):
> 25,000 hits per day
> 25,000 files hit
> 5,500 Pages
> 720 visits
> 10Gig of bandwidth a month.
> 
> Below are the logwatch messages being sent to me.  I also have a bunch of 
> PAM faulty modules too that I don't remember seeing before and am not sure 
> what to do about them either.
>     Expunge ignored on readonly mailbox: 5 Time(s)
>     PAM adding faulty module: /lib/security/pam_unix.so: 3 Time(s)
>     Mailbox is open by another process, access is readonly: 3 Time(s)
>     PAM unable to dlopen(/lib/security/pam_unix.so): 3 Time(s)
>     Mailbox open failed, aborted: Too many open files in system: 3 Time(s)

Have a look at ...

/usr/src/linux-?????/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt

looking at file-max and file-nr.

You may wish to check what is going on at the time of the messages and
then adjust your settings as needed.

Regards,
Ed

-- 
"I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never
actually known what the question is."

--The computer "Deep Thought" in "Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy"