[ILUG] ls: Too many open files - pam_limit.so - ulimit

[Brian Brazil]

On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 03:54:34PM +0000, Paul O'Malley wrote:

Thanks for the response.

> As you are running out of File handles then may I suggest that you have
> a look at FileCache. 

Will do.

> Some systems will not allow you adjust ulimit -n, that may be what is
> occurring to you.

I came across a reference to that alright.

> The fact that you want to open so many files at once scares me on a
> standard server for all users. Any glitch and bada bing -- you finish
> it.

I'm the only user. Now you're really scared. Running apache, postgres(does
nothing), sshd, cron, samba ,atd, usbmgr, xdm, xfs, mrtg every 5 mins. 2xrsync
to pull mrtg from 2 other systems. I PuTTy in from my win98se system -
normally 3 or 4 sessions. xdm only provides thin-client service.

My file-max is ~54k. That scares me. (amd1200, 512mb sdram).
file-nr indicated that only ~700 files were ever open simuntaneously.
Accordingly I don't feel that it poses a general danger to root
processes.

1 cron every hour to 'backup' my homedir with rsync. Line IIRC is
43 * * * * rsync -alqc /home/bbrazil/
--exclude=/home/bbrazil/kernel-config/linux.2.4.25
gateway:amd1200l-backup
Auth is hostbased with sshd. Running Woody on both systems. 100Mbps.
ls | wc -l says that there are approx 6k files in my homedir. Less the number 
of files in the kernel source gives number of file to be kept up to date. 
I can only assume that rsync is trying to open way too many files.

I'd be more specific only my room is some distance away and if I came back 
I'd have to wait while to get a computer that can handle a ssh connection
without messing up the shift key.

> Just for laughs would you like to tell us why a new kernel is not the
> way you want to go forward here? (see last line for my reason for asking
> this question)

I build for a 166(gateway) on the same tree. It's slow enough as it is. And when
I get back to my 386 and 486... I'm unsure if this is a good reason.

> With regard to your MRTG query,
> 
> $default_maxbytes_directive in cfgmaker should be of greatest
> assistance.

No help I'm afraid. Just provides a default for MaxBytes if I don't bother to
specify it. The default behaviour of MRTG is to ignore a result if it is
greater than maxbytes. Say I want to MRTG 'lo'. I was thinking '0' might
do it but I found no reference to it on the web and that if this was so
maybe someone on the list had come across it. And I don't want to ignore
all values. Maybe I'll take a peek at the source...

Also cfgmaker seems to make what I want more difficult than it needs to
be. I'll be monitoring a lot of variables. See my next paragraph.

> Guessing on may part says with your RSYNC question based on the MRTG
> query can use an option of --bwlimit=KBPS  where 0 is as much bandwidth
> as possible.

Acutally they were unrelated. In the last few hours I produced a nice
script to take iptables counters and produce output suitable for mtrg.
As it can add an arbitarily large number of counters together I can see
things getting interesting. I'll throw it up on my website next time I'm
on the net in case anyone has a use for it.

> Have lots of fun,
As if I don't enjoy this sort of thing.

Brian