kernel: file: table is full

Chuck Swiger cswiger at mac.com
Wed May 11 19:19:47 PDT 2005


Lisa Casey wrote:
> I am getting this error message ( /kernel: file: table is full) on my
> FreeBSD 4.6 box just before the system seems to "freeze" or "lock up".

BTW, 4.6 is fairly old.  Please try to update to 4.10 or later.

> I googled it then went to the handbook and read that I need to tune
> kern.maxfiles in my kernel. My question is:  Is this something I can adjust
> using /etc/sysctl.conf? If so (and I think I can) what is the syntax I would
> use (I have not had a need to mess with sysctl.conf before).

echo "kern.maxfiles=9876" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

> I am using the generic kernel. How can I know what the value of maxfiles is
> currently in my generic kernel and how high might I want to raise it?

If you want to see what the current value is, do "sysctl kern.maxfiles".  How 
large you can increase it is a complex question, it depends on what other 
options are configured and how much kernel memory is being reserved, but you 
can make this much bigger if you need to.

Anyway, it might be a good idea to run fstat and see what is using all of your 
file descriptors; maybe tuning that would be better than tuning the system...

-- 
-Chuck


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