Date:        Thu, 02 Oct 2003 12:04:12 -0700
    From:        Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
    Message-ID:  <200310021904.MAA16151@Pescadero.DSG.Stanford.EDU>

  | >No: I'm saying that the DEFAULT hard limit be 1024.
  | 
  | No, you did not.  You said:
  | 
  | >> > >The per-process 'hard' limit should be a fixed number.... say 1024.
  |                                                ^^^^^
  | 
  | The "fixed" is the unacceptable part. (Myself, I would support increasing
  | the current default limit, but that is *not* what you said.)

I suspect the "fixed" in the original was not meant as you have interpreted
it, but in contrast to "whatever max vnodes happens to be".

That is, the idea would be for each process to have a fixed upper limit
(as well as, presumably, the same default soft limit as now - or whatever).

Which isn't to say that all processes need have the same fixed upper limit,
nor how that fixed limit should be set (that is, it need not be a #define
somewhere, it could be via sysctl, login.conf, ...)

Rather, just remove the current state where a process (that increases its
soft limit) can have as many open files as there are free vnodes available
to reference them at the time (which of course, depends upon what other
processes happen to be using - and hence, isn't "fixed").

kre