As a follow up I did find this on a Debian web site:
echo "65536" > /proc/sys/fs/file-max # for 2.2 and 2.4 kernel
echo "131072" > /proc/sys/fs/inode-max # for 2.2 kernel only
So it looks like you don't have to worry about inodes on a 2.4 kernel.
Ken Rea
On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, User for SpamAssassin Mail List wrote:
>
> Matt,
>
>
> It's a Debian Stable system, and I did bump up that file and also put in a
> script on boot up to raise that number. Some of the ideas I found (after
> doing a google search) suggested changing the inode-max as well but I
> could not find that in the proc file system.
>
> We will see if that solves the problem.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ken Rea
>
>
> On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Matt Kettler wrote:
>
> > User for SpamAssassin Mail List wrote:
> > >
> > > I think this is where the problems is coming in. Looking through the logs
> > > I found this:
> > >
> > > Dec 1 09:13:20 mail spamd[31417]: DCC -> check failed: cannot fork: Too
> > > many open files in system
> > > at /usr/share/perl5/Mail/SpamAssassin/Util.pm line 1019, <GEN2184> line
> > > 101.
> > >
> > > Dec 1 09:13:20 mail spamd[31417]: clean message (-2.2/6.0) for
> > > jbrugger:2917 in 0.8 seconds,
> > > 4001 bytes.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > So how does one fix the problem of to many open files on a system?
> >
> > What kind of OS is it?
> >
> > On most linux kernels you can adjust the system-wide file handle limit using
> > /proc/sys/fs/file-max.
> >
> >
> > Stealing an example from
> > http://www.linuxforum.com/linux-filesystem/proc.html
> >
> > # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
> > 4096
> >
> > # echo 8192 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
> > # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
> > 8192
> >
>
