Subject: Re: Time to bump the default open files limit?
To: NetBSD Kernel Technical Discussion List <tech-kern@netbsd.org>
From: Greywolf <greywolf@starwolf.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 06/21/2002 13:37:49
On Fri, 21 Jun 2002, Greg A. Woods wrote:

# Bumping the default per-process 'nofiles' limit (OPEN_MAX) above 64 is
# probably not a very good idea.  There may be a few systems where every
# process, and especially unprivileged processes, might commonly need more
# than 64 open files, and where the system has enough resources to allow
# for such an increase, but in general this is a very rare situation and
# bumping the limit can lead to all kinds of more nasty scenarios
# (eg. where kern.maxfiles is hit).

You realise that 64 is a soft limit; most processes are given reign to
adjust that upward to whatever the hard limit is.  At startup time,
wherever it makes most sense, all one needs to do is up the soft limit
on a per-case basis.

I don't know of too many machines (yeahyeahyeah, "just because you don't
know of them doesn't mean they don't exist yada yada yada.") that only
allow 64 (or fewer) descriptors as a hard limit; almost certainly, if
they do, they're probably not suited for the purpose of being, e.g., a
KDC.


				--*greywolf;
--
Of course it runs NetBSD.