Re: "Too many open files in system" error

Jonatan Evald Buus <jonatan(dot)buus(at)cellpointmobile(dot)com> writes:
> Also, what would a reasonable setting for "max_files_per_process" based on a
> machine with 2GB RAM running FreeBSD 7.1 be?
> The comments mention that "max_files_per_process may" be set as low as 25
> but what would the implications of this restriction be?

At some point you're going to start losing performance because of too
many close() and open() calls that have to be issued to switch a small
number of file descriptors around to different tables. AFAIK no one
has really tried to measure the issue. Personally I'd be pretty
concerned about setting it to less than 100 or so.

regards, tom lane