[Q] "nofiles" value change ..

[Tony, Lim]

All..

I would like to know what impact is expecting to change "nofiles" value.

Now, our UNIX server has a '256' value at nofiles parameter.

I could be confirmed using "ulimit -a" command.

I should change change this value '256' to '1024' due to another reason.
However, before then, I really want to know that this change will impact which part in UNIX server.

Would anyone let me know about this ?

[Pete Randall]

I'm assuming that you mean nfiles rather than nofiles. The only implication this will have is that your kernel will occupy a little more memory because it now has to have larger tables to keep track of the increased number of open files. The difference is minimal.


Pete

[spex]

Hi Tony,

I believe the 'nofiles(descriptors)' line you see when you run 'ulimit -a' is derived from the following kernel parameters:

nfile: System-wide limit on open files
maxfiles: Soft-limit on max. # of open files per process
maxfiles_lim: Hard-limit on max. # of open files per process

To increase this value, you'll want to adjust maxfiles and maxfiles_lim upward. Note that maxfiles <= maxfiles_lim << nfile.

PCS

[spex]

You can also increase nofiles for the current session by 'ulimit -n '.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Increasing nofiles wich is actually maxfiles and maxfiles_lim will increase the per-process number of open file descriptor limits. Because this could increase the system-wide number of open files, you need to also consider increasing nfile.

You should note that if 10 processes have the file "/MickeyMouse" open, that only counts as 1 for nfile so that increases in the per-process limits is not a direct
relationship to the needed increase in the system-wide files.

[Tony, Lim]

Thanks all.