Too many open files

[Alex]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 11:39 AM, Pete Houston <ph1 at openstrike.co.uk> wrote:
> See the man page for limits.conf for setting persistent limits.

Pete, thanks very much. Any idea why the system already appears to
have more than the maximum number of open files (1024) according to
lsof for the amavis user?

Also, what is the difference between setting it in limits.conf and
setting it with sysctl?

sysctl says the number of open files is much larger:

# sysctl fs.file-max
fs.file-max = 3288819

Is that for the whole system, and ulimit is per-process? Or per-user?

Also, should this happen under normal circumstances? Is it possible
that amavisd is not managing file descriptors correctly and perhaps
using too many, or not closing them after use?

Thanks,
Alex

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 11:39 AM, Pete Houston <ph1 at openstrike.co.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 11:31:57AM -0500, Alex wrote:
>> I've search around quite a bit, and the only suggestions I see are to
>> use ulimit to increase it. This won't survive a reboot, so I wondered
>> how to do it at the system level instead?
>
> See the man page for limits.conf for setting persistent limits.
>
> Pete
> --
> Openstrike - improving business through open source
> http://www.openstrike.co.uk/ or call 01722 770036