HP-UX error 23

[John Curtis]

I'm running an Oracle database under HP-UX 11.0
and I'm receiving an Oracle error that indicates that "Oracle is not able to create the file being used to hold audit trail records". The related HP-UX error 23 says "File table overflow". Obivously I've run out of space somewhere. Where or what should I be looking for?
Thanks

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

The number of open files allowed by the kernel's 'nfile' parameter has been exceeded. You will need to increase this (via SAM (Kernel Configuration)) and reboot. You can use 'glance' to check the current nfile utilization via the [t]able report. See this document for more information:

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/os/KCparams.OverviewAll.html

...JRF...

[John Curtis]

This kernel parameter is calculated by this formula (16*(NPROC+16+MAXUSERS)/10+32+2*(NPTY+NSTRPTY+NSTRTEL)). The formula is the same on all our HP servers yet the nfile parameter is larger on all our other servers.
In SAM I can't change the calculated value without altering the formula. How can I safely increase the nfile value?

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

Other than nfile, the kernel parameters you would want to take note and verify would be maxfiles and maxfiles_lim. maxfiles indicates the number of files a process is allowed to have open at any given time.

These parameters are especially important in an Oracle MTS (multi-threaded server) environment.

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong
Brainbench MVP for Unix Admin
http://www.brainbench.com

[James R. Ferguson]

John:

You are correct in that 'nfile's value is based on several other parameters. My preference is to increase 'maxusers' since increasing maxusers impacts 'nproc' and both impact 'nfile'. I lean toward staying with the formulas, rather than overridding them with discrete values, to attempt to keep the best interrelationships among the various parameters.

...JRF...

[unixdaddy]

I agree with James. I've seen it before where someone has changed the formula to a figure. Later when changing kernel paramters for new software or for some other reason, because the dependencies have been removed things don't work as they should, you then have to track down what the kernel parameters are set to and should be set. My preference is to update maxusers which is what I did when we had the same problem which you are describing. We changed it from 75 to 200.

[marc seguin]

Have a look at :
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x09b014a24fd1d4118fef0090279cd0f9,00.html
or :
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x7012a24d9abcd4118fef0090279cd0f9,00.html

They had the same problem as you.

On my workstations, i modified the two kernel paramaeters in this way :
nproc (20+16*MAXUSERS)
nfile (64*(NPROC+16+MAXUSERS)/10+32+2*(NPTY+NSTRPTY+NSTRTEL))

marc.