topic Re: error message in syslog in Operating System - HP-UX

error message in syslog

Lai Nee Shyang_1 — Wed, 28 Nov 2001 01:18:57 GMT

Hi there,

Anyone seen this error message "vmunix: file: table is full" before? Its repeating itself and syslog.log and dmesg. What can be wrong?

Regards.

Lai

Re: error message in syslog

Scott Van Kalken — Wed, 28 Nov 2001 01:31:42 GMT

you will find that nfile needs to be increased in the kernel.

This can be checked with the following command:

sar -v 5 10

Re: error message in syslog

Scott Van Kalken — Wed, 28 Nov 2001 01:36:19 GMT

oops - I forgot to mention...

The output from your sar command will look like this:

12:37:03 text-sz ov proc-sz ov inod-sz ov file-sz ov

the one you want to see is file-sz. If the first value is larger than the second, then you need to update nfile.

Re: error message in syslog

Mary Ann Lipa — Wed, 28 Nov 2001 03:09:41 GMT

Hi,

This error "vmunix: file: table is full" or "File table overflow" means that the
maximum number of open files is exceeded. One of the ways to confirm that when
the error is scrolling on the console is to run "sar -v 2 5". For example:

HP-UX rubles B.11.00 U 9000/800 06/13/01

11:07:10 text-sz ov proc-sz ov inod-sz ov file-sz ov
11:07:12 N/A N/A 157/276 0 476/476 0 792/920 0
11:07:14 N/A N/A 157/276 0 476/476 0 792/920 0
11:07:16 N/A N/A 157/276 0 476/476 0 792/920 0
11:07:18 N/A N/A 157/276 0 476/476 0 792/920 0
11:07:20 N/A N/A 157/276 0 476/476 0 792/920 0

Look at the column file-sz. The first number 792 shows the number of current
open files/the second number 920 shows the currently configured maximum number
of open files. When the error is reported, the first value is usually close to
the second value.

You can usually remove this error condition by increasing the value of NFILE
and/or MAXUSERS in the configuration file for the kernel and rebuilding the
kernel. The system administration documentation for your series of computer has
information about the kernel configuration file and how to reconfigure the
kernel.

I advise increasing the MAXUSERS kernel parameter which will in turn
increase the NFILE and NINODE parameters.
Please use SAM(1M) utility to increase this kernel parameter. SAM has good
comments on this.

good luck,
d_b