On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Florian Laws wrote:
> I have problems with Exim 3.22 which seems to leak
> file handles on two Linux machines:
> #1: SuSE Linux 6.2, Kernel 2.2.18, glibc 2.1.1,
> one IDE disk
> #2: SuSE Linux 6.4, Kernel 2.2.16 + raid patches,
> glibc 2.1.3, two SCSI disks as software RAID.
>
> Under heavy load, both machines seem to run out of
> available file descriptors, no processes can run anymore
> because of that.
Well, Exim is implemented mainly in short-lived processes. The daemon is
the only long-lived process, and its code has been extremely stable for
a very long time, so I doubt very much whether it would leak file
handles[*]. Every other Exim process lives for only a short time.
Therefore, I find it hard to believe that Exim as a whole could leak
file handles. Of course, if the system is very busy and there are
zillions of Exim processes, they may try to use a large number at once.
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, John Horne wrote:
> On 19-Apr-01 at 10:32:26 Florian Laws wrote:
> > One error message of exim itself:
> > 2001-04-19 11:37:15 14qAsF-0000V4-01 exec of
> > exim -Mc failed: Too many open files in system
> >
> I could be wrong here, but you may want to look at the 'lookup_open_max'
> option.
>
> Not sure why the manual (page 85) says to 'reduce' the value if you get an
> error message.
Because that will make Exim use fewer file descriptors!
-----------------
[*] But of course I could be wrong. Some bugs live an awful long time
before they are killed. OTOH, our Exim daemons here run for weeks and
weeks - but this is on Solaris, not Linux. So anything is possible. I
guess you really do need to find out more information.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
