OVDB Too many open files

[Per Hedeland]

Kenichi Okada <okada at opaopa.org> wrote:
>I use SunOS-2.5.1.
>
>% uname -a
>SunOS kohada 5.5.1 Generic_103640-08 sun4m sparc SUNW,SPARCstation-10
>
>% limit
>cputime         unlimited
>filesize        unlimited
>datasize        2097148 kbytes
>stacksize       8192 kbytes
>coredumpsize    0 kbytes
>vmemoryuse      unlimited
>descriptors     4096
>
>How do I increase my kernel's file table size?

Unless I'm missing something, you most definitely don't want to do that
on Solaris 2.5.1, rather you must *lower* the per-process limit for innd
to 1024. From the Solaris 2 FAQ 3.45:

  Raising the soft limit past 256 may confuse certain applications,
  especially BCP applications.  Raising the limit past 1024 may confuse
  applications that use select(). Select() cannot use more than 1024 file
  descriptors at this time prior to Solaris 7. In Solaris 2.6, the RPC
  code was rewritten to use poll(), which does work with many more fds
  than select(). Prior to 2.6, all RPC servers will likely crash and burn
  if you increase the fd soft limit past 1024.

  Solaris 7 allows upto 65536 fds passed to select; this does require
  recompiling with a larger value for FD_SETSIZE.

Innd is a heavy user of select(), and Bad Things will happen if you try
to use fds > 1023 with select() pre Solaris 7... (perhaps this might
even be the *cause* of your problems).

--Per Hedeland
per at erix.ericsson.se