[Orca-users] too many open files issue

[Darren Dunham]

> I've googled for the answer to my current orca issue, which is that I'm
> getting errors such as this:
> 
> ./orca: warning: cannot create Orca::HTMLFile object: cannot open
> `/www/sites/orca/html/orcallator/o_gold_gauge_qfe5Ipkt_per_s,__qfe5Opkt_per_
> s.html.htm' for writing: Too many open files.
> 
> And I saw that about two years ago, this problem was discovered to be
> specific to perl on Solaris, having to do with fopen().  I've tested the
> perl code that was posted to the list on both Solaris and Tru64, and it only
> hit the 256 descriptor limit on Solaris.  So, the question is, does anyone
> know a way around this?  The solution mentioned on the FAQ doesn't fix this
> (manually setting ulimit in the shell).

My ramblings below are not based anything I know about Orca or whether
it has anything to do with your problem.  However, it might give you
some ideas.

#1 It is possible to raise the per-process limitations on the total
   number of file descriptors with limit/ulimit and /etc/system
   settings.

#2 The 32 bit STDIO library on Solaris is restricted to 256 open files.
   Changing that breaks backward compatibility.  64 bit applications
   have no compatibility issues, so they don't have the same
   limitations.

Both of the above are mentioned in the Solaris 2 FAQ.

3.46) How can I increase the number of file descriptors per process?
http://www.science.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html#q3.46

#3 Older perl binaries used the system STDIO interface for I/O by
   default, but can be built otherwise.  I would imagine a perl not
   using STDIO would not have the 256 fd limitiation on Solaris.


-- 
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham at taos.com
Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
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