Re: [mv] Offtopic - Weird Server Error.

[Kyle Hayes <kyle540@quicknet.net>]

Yep.  You ran out of file descriptors.  It isn't clear to me from the
error whether you ran out of file descriptors globally or for the parent
process that died.  Version 2.0 of the Linux kernel had defaults that were
somewhat low for total and per-process file descriptor limits.  If it is
per-process limits that are the problem, you can reset those.  If it is
system-wide, then you need to recompile the kernel with higher limits.

I think the default limit was set to 256 per process, but I am not sure. 
I have been running both 2.0 and 2.2 for a while without having to change
the limits.  The default limits in 2.2 are higher.

run:
	ulimit -a
to see what the limits are.  Use ulimit -n to set the number of fd's per
process (I think you need to be root to do this).

On my 2.2 system I get:

core file size (blocks)  1000000
data seg size (kbytes)   unlimited
file size (blocks)       unlimited
max memory size (kbytes) unlimited
stack size (kbytes)      8192
cpu time (seconds)       unlimited
max user processes       256
pipe size (512 bytes)    8
open files               1024
virtual memory (kbytes)  2105343

The next-to-last line about open files is the one you are concerned with. 
Each user that comes in will use at least two file descriptors and maybe
more.  One from Apache to the vlink/tlink CGI, and one from that to MV
gives you two.  There is probably another one or two somewhere in there,
so these things go fast.

There is usually a hard limit over which you cannot set the allowed open
files.  That is compiled into the kernel.  I do not know where to change
that off the top of my head.

Best,
Kyle

On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, you wrote:
> ******    message to minivend-users from Jason Korkin <jkorkin@korksoft.com>     ******
> 
> 	Hi all, I know this is a bit off topic to MV, but its only happening on
> the MV server.  I'm running Linux, 2.0.36 kernel...  has anyone ever
> seen this one?... all of my MV catalogs went down yesterday (along with
> any CGI scripts too) due to this error:
> 
> 	(24)Too many open files: couldn't spawn child process: 
> 
> 	I'm thinking its because I ran out of file descriptors... but then
> again, why would HTML pages still be pulled?  Any insights?
> 
> 	Regards,
> 
> 	Jason Korkin.