From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jan 2 11:23:18 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B9D2E37B433 for ; Thu, 2 Jan 2003 11:23:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from sccrmhc03.attbi.com (sccrmhc03.attbi.com [204.127.202.63]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0251043EB2 for ; Thu, 2 Jan 2003 11:23:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.no-ip.com) Received: from be-well.ilk.org (lowellg.ne.client2.attbi.com[24.147.188.198]) by sccrmhc03.attbi.com (sccrmhc03) with ESMTP id <2003010219231600300lc91me>; Thu, 2 Jan 2003 19:23:16 +0000 Received: from be-well.ilk.org (lowellg.ne.client2.attbi.com [24.147.188.198] (may be forged)) by be-well.ilk.org (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id h02JNFGZ074501 for ; Thu, 2 Jan 2003 14:23:15 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.no-ip.com) Received: (from lowell@localhost) by be-well.ilk.org (8.12.6/8.12.6/Submit) id h02JNEUM074498; Thu, 2 Jan 2003 14:23:14 -0500 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: be-well.ilk.org: lowell set sender to freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org using -f To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: kern.maxfiles guidelines References: <003501c2b27c$975034a0$3c01010a@mwimpee> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 02 Jan 2003 14:23:14 -0500 In-Reply-To: <003501c2b27c$975034a0$3c01010a@mwimpee> Message-ID: <44lm23mk4d.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 20 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Michael Wimpee" writes: > errors into the syslog. Newsgroup posts all seem to prescribe 'sysctl -w > kern.maxfiles=[big number]', but I haven't seen any guidelines for the > value of 'big'. Assume I get excited and do 'sysctl -w > kern.maxfiles=9999999999'. What will happen as I open more and more > files? Is there a formula for calculating good values of 'big' (eg, MB > RAM * SQL_MAX_CONNECTIONS * Pi)? Or do I just keep increasing it until > it's 'big enough'? Unless you have an a priori method of determining the most file handles that should ever be needed simultaneously, empirical methods are the best choice available -- and will do fine. > Increasing the value (which I've done) indeed fixes the problem, but > I've yet to see a rationale for the stated values people are using and > there *must* be a reason for the defaults (anybody know what it is?). It's a compromise between running out of file handles and wasting memory on the file table. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message