From owner-freebsd-stable  Sat Sep  5 07:04:51 1998
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Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 01:59:33 +1200 (NZST)
From: Andrew McNaughton <andrew@squiz.co.nz>
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To: Tom <tom@uniserve.com>
cc: The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>, Bob K <melange@yip.org>,
        The Lab <thelab@nmarcom.com>, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: too many open files
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On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Tom wrote:

> > 	One requires a rebuild/reboot of the system...one doesn't.  IN a
> > production environment, /etc/login.conf is about the only choice...
> 
>   Except you are talking about two different things.  MAXUSERS controls
> the system wide file table.  /etc/login.conf controls per-user file
> limits.  You can increase the limits in /etc/login.conf all you want, but
> if the system wide table is full, you will still get "too many open files"
> errors.
> 
> Tom

between sysctl and login.conf, either can be set without a rebuild.
references to MAXUSERS seem to suggest that it affects a whole range of
values.  Some of it can be overridden via sysctl.  Can anyone clarify what
if anything can't?  sysctl and ulimit have sorted out my recent problems,
with  numbers of processes and files, but perhaps there's  other reasons
why I should increase MAXUSERS?

I'm currently running a busy webserver with MAXUSERS=64.  Apache docs
suggest MAXUSERS=256.

Andrew McNaughton


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