I received three replies from:
Dale Inman
Sean O'Connell
Gavin Smith
(original post below)
Both Gavin and Dale suggested checking the max. values of open-max-soft &
open-max-hard using sysconfig -Q proc. This showed both values as 4096
(consistent with dxkerneltuner not allowing me to go higher than this).
Gavin also referred to Appendix E of the System and Configuration Manual on
changing this value for applications.
While digging around the manuals, I also came across section 5.3.3.11, and I
quote:
"The open-max-soft and open-max-hard attributes both have default values of
4096 file
descriptors (open files) per process. The maximum number of open files per
process is
65,536. If your applications require many open files, you may want to
increase the maximum
open file descriptor limit."
It also says refer to the Release Notes, which I did, section 1.10:
"In previous versions of the DIGITAL UNIX operating system, the number of
file descriptors, or the maximum number of
open files per process, was limited to 4096. For DIGITAL UNIX Version 4.0D,
the number has been increased to
65,536 file descriptors (64K) per process.
The previous maximum number of file descriptors (4096) is now the default
for backward compatibility reasons.
However, customers whose applications need many thousands of open files can
obtain them by using the procedure
detailed in Appendix E."
Which is in line with what Gavin suggested.
After all that, I realised that what I needed wasn't in fact a higher value
of file descriptors available for any particular process, but a higher max.
no. of open files for the system as a whole. This is accomplished by raising
the values of max-vnodes or maxusers.
Sean had a suspicion that this might be my problem and recommended I run
sys_check, which I did, and lo and behold it recommended I increase the
value of maxusers.
I've since applied this change and all seems well. I have a suspicion the
problem has arisen due to a recent increase in the no. of webservers on our
box.
Many thanks to those who responded.
Chris Sim
System Administrator
Pacific Access Pty Ltd
Email: csim_at_pacificaccess.com.au
Phone: +61 3 9246 4764
Fax: +61 3 9246 4662
Original Message:
> Dear Managers,
>
> The need has arisen recently to raise the no. of file descriptors on our
> 4.0D box from the default 4096. I attempted to do this by creating a
> stanza
> formatted file containing:
>
> proc:
> open-max-soft=8192
> open-max-hard=8192
>
> I then merged this into my sysconfigtab file using sysconfigdb.
>
> After rebooting the machine, I noticed these values weren't changed. When
> attempting to raise them using dxkerneltuner, I received a message stating
> the values were invalid. The max. is supposed to be 65k correct?
>
> Do I need to edit param.h etc.. ?
Received on Thu Oct 14 1999 - 01:01:43 NZDT