kern.openfiles limit on FreeBSD

On Wed, 2005-02-02 at 16:41 +0100, Bolmerg-Berliner Ludger - Munich-MR
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have just upgraded to FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE-p5 and have problems with
> the number of open files in the system.
> I am using DCC 1.2.67, SA 3.0.2 and sendmail 8.13.1
> 
> At a certain point in time kern.openfiles starts to increase until I get
> "too many open files" error messages.  I have a two processor machine
> with two Gig memory. The load on the machine is very low and it is only
> handling mail.
> When I stop the sendmail process kern.openfiles does not decrease.  But
> restarting dccifd will decrease the value from >4000 to something like
> 300 
> 
> Here are some other kernel variables that may be of interest:
> kern.maxfiles: 15000
> kern.maxfilesperproc: 7408
> kern.ipc.maxsockets: 8232
> 
> I do not know if this is a DCC, SA or OS issue.  Has anybody seen a
> similar behaviour.
> 
> Regards,
> Ludger Bolmerg
> 
> Ludger Bolmerg
> Munich Re
> IT164 Network Services
> 
I have come across something similar on a DragonFlyBSD box of mine but
have not pinpointed dccifd, sa, or mimedefang as the culprit yet. It
also seems to require some type of trigger as the box can run for weeks
without issue and then suddenly openfiles skyrockets.

Sven