Re: [EXIM] (Possibly Off Topic) "Too many open files in syst…

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Author: Anand Buddhdev
Date:  
To: Kevin J Collins
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [EXIM] (Possibly Off Topic) "Too many open files in system" error
On Mon, May 03, 1999 at 03:43:39PM +0100, Kevin J Collins wrote:

> Here at Heriot-Watt we've just migrated to Exim. The config is
> Exim-2.12 running under RedHat 5.2 . The migration took place
> over the weekend. Today with all the users getting in, the
> machine crashed.
>
> According to the Exim logs, there were a lot of
> "Too many open files in system" entries.
>
> Is this a Linux problem, an exim problem or a bit of both?


You're running into resource limits for processes. Look at adding a ulimit
statement to your exim startup scripts to make more openfiles available to
exim, eg.:

Assuming you're using bash/sh, find out how many open files are allowed
currently:

ulimit -a

Then:

ulimit -n <bigger number>

If you're using csh/tcsh, use "limit" instead. Read the man pages for more
info.

You may also want to recompile the kernel to allow it to allocate more
resources. Generally, the default kernels that ship with Linux and FreeBSD
aren't compiled for heavy usage, so you have to tune and then recompile
them if your usage is heavy. For linux, you should be able to find a HOWTO
on recompiling the kernel.

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