file table overflow!!

[Sprint Unix Team]

does the above message something to do nfiles?? becoz when i increase the nfiles..the message stops..

is the above message connected to something else???

[Roger Baptiste]

hi,

yes the error is related
to the number of allowed open
files reaching the limit.
nfiles is the system wide
parameter on the limit of the
open files.
Maxfiles is the limit per user.

You can monitor its usage
through glance - option t .

-raj

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Yes it does. Do something like a sar -v 10 5
and look at the file-sz and (ov) overflow columns. That will tell you if you need to increase nfiles.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Ho again:

Of course the other side of that answer is that you may have a ton of processes that shouldn't be running that are eating your files as well.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Yes. 'nfile' is the maximum number of files that can be open, system-wide. The overflow warning in the 'syslog' is usually transitory. You can monitor the utilization of this kernel parameter with 'sar' or 'glance's [t] menu. For example:

# sar -v 5 15

...which will report process, inode, and file table limits, current values, and number of overflows. In the example above, 15-samples would be taken, one every 5-seconds.

See also:

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/os/KCparam.Nfile.html

Regards!

...JRF...

[harry d brown jr]

If you don't already have "lsof", get it from here:

hpux.cs.utah.edu

With lsof you can find processes that have many open files. Maybe you a program that has wigged out, or simply nfiles was too small. I usually set mine to over 25000 (ouch that's a lot).

And you can watch nfiles from glance.