Re: file-max is only 4096 with 1 GB mem

[Hugo Vanwoerkom <hvw59601@care2.com>]

Dieter Faulbaum wrote:
> I have a small problem under Debian etch with a (vanilla) kernel
> 2.6.14.3 on a AMD 64 (32-bit) system with 1GB memory:
> often I see error messages about running out of file handles.
> 'cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max' shows: 4096
> This seems very sparse for 1GB memory.
>
> Looking at Documentation/proc.txt I found this.
>
> ...
> The value  in  file-max  denotes  the  maximum number of file handles
> that the Linux kernel will allocate. When you get a lot of error
> messages about running out of file handles, you might want to raise
> this limit. The default value is 10% of  RAM in kilobytes.  To  change
> it, just  write the new number into the file:
> ...
> # echo 8192 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
>
> Okay this works, but I don't understand why this value is so small.
> Is anyone else here with such a problem and can explain why this
> value is so small?
> On another computer with etch (but an Intel Pentium 4 CPU) I get 89808,
> which is what I expect from the docu.

Well, you're not getting any answers to solve this.
This is what I would do in your case.
I would run on 2.6.14-ck6 from:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/
using the .config file you are using now.

Then I would go to their very active mailing list and ask the question 
on why this happened. They are all kernel gurus. That will get you the 
answer.

BTW I run Sarge on that kernel. I find it snappier that the others 
because of the scheduler work that has been done.

H