On Feb 2, 10:38pm, cgd@netbsd.org (Chris G. Demetriou) wrote:
-- Subject: Re: stuck with filled vnode table

| christos@zoulas.com (Christos Zoulas) writes:
| > Exactly. And make(1) runs effectively unlimit descriptors when it starts
| > up. This is so that when it forks jobs in parallel, it can multiplex the
| > i/o channels of each job.
| 
| i would think that:
| 
| * the number of file descriptors needed by a parallel make could be
| guessed with some reasonable degree or accuracy, and
| 
| * it's not nearly enough to justify unlimiting fd usage....

It is mostly lazy coding. Other programs do this too (java).
Maybe the kernel should not allow non-superuser processes to consume all
the system's file descriptors?

christos