Re: Too many files open error on CVS/Linux

[Joi Ellis]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Brett G. Palmer wrote:

> We run cvs on Redhat 7.0.  CVS runs well for a few weeks but then we start
> to get errors saying the following:
> 
> cvs server: cannot open .cvsignore: Too many open files
> cvs server: cannot open .cvswrappers: Too many open files
> cvs server: cannot open current directory: Too many open files
> 
> We usually have to reboot the server to fix the problem.  The problem is
> becoming more frequent as CVS is used more and more.  This is probably a
> Linux file handle limitation but is there a work around?  We are also using
> the WinCVS client (version 1.3.7.1 Beta), but we have also seen this problem
> on JCvs.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
We have a 6.2 server which has this problem occasionally, but in
our case it's because there are two many people running GNOME desktops
across VNC and/or running big builds simultaneiously.

One workaround I found is to do something like:

  cat 8196 >/proc/sys/fs/file-max

I think that's the one, anyway.  Check your kernel version and it's
documentation to verify which file it is.  On 6.2 this value defaults to 
4096 open file handles, and you can simply cat a new value into it to
increase the number.

-- 
Joi Ellis                    Software Engineer
Aravox Technologies          address@hidden, address@hidden

No matter what we think of Linux versus FreeBSD, etc., the one thing I
really like about Linux is that it has Microsoft worried.  Anything
that kicks a monopoly in the pants has got to be good for something.
           - Chris Johnson