Too many files crashing services

[Robert Fitzpatrick]

On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 16:16 +1100, Norberto Meijome wrote:
> Norberto Meijome wrote:
> > 
> > No, you are running out of maxfiles, as per "kern.maxfiles limit 
> > exceeded by uid ..." .
> 
> errr... of course, i meant to say, you have more open files than allowed 
> by kern.maxfiles.

Yeah, still struggling with this issue since upgrading lots of packages.
Unless I stop and start Postfix every 10 minutes, the problem starts to
build until too many files are open. Messages from lots of different
UID's with too many files open, I am not sure how to pinpoint what
services is causing the problem. I only assume Postfix since the problem
only goes away when stopping and starting. With Weitse help on the
Postfix list, I tracked down some errors in the maillog related to too
many open files as well, which also points to Postfix. But Weitse had
said it may not be Postfix doing it, waiting on his opinion now after
sending him some more log info.

If I am exceeding the kern.maxfiles, why now? This server has always
performed the same mainly mail filtering and other light web and db
tasks for over a couple of years. The mail traffic is has not changed.
The upgrades were many including Perl, Postfix, amavisd-new,
SpamAssassin, ClamAV, but all from recent versions with portupgrade and
no errors. The biggest jump was amavisd-new from 2.2.x to 2.3.3. I ran
'perl-after-upgrade -f' and 'pkgdb -F' all good.

Ideas?

--
Robert