Re: [EXIM] Semi-FAQ: too many open files and Error 11 proble…

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Author: Nigel Metheringham
Date:  
To: Ben Parker
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [EXIM] Semi-FAQ: too many open files and Error 11 problems

ben@??? said:
} Would be grateful for settings anyone else is suceeding with to tackle
} these two problems which happen when the server is very heavily
} loaded. I get the "too many open files" error especially when a lot of
} messages land for majordomo at the same time. I have set everything I
} could find in the spec.txt and FAQs not to overstress my system
} (RedHat 5.0, exim 2.11). exim is compiled WITH_DB (Berkley), should I
} try ndbm? Do I have to recompile Linux? Yikes

Are you running out of per-process files (normally a limit of 256) or
overall open files?

You can check the per system limits by looking at:-
  /proc/sys/kernel/file-nr    - max # files used at once
  /proc/sys/kernel/file-max    - limit of files open


You can increase the per system limits by doing something like:-
echo "4096" >/proc/sys/kernel/file-max

You may also wish to look at the inode limits (replace file by inode in
the proc filenames above), and increase this by a significant number.

If you are running out of per process filehandles, then you probably need
to patch the kernel, and maybe libc. [Gnu libc has limits of 1024 files
per process by default, but kernel still needs tweaking]. I would be
suprised if you hit this limit on a mail system (thats a news system
problem).

    Nigel.
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