Too many open files

[C. P. Ghost]

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 6:46 PM, Prabhpal S. Mavi
<prabhpal at digital-infotech.net> wrote:
> Greetings Friends,
>
> have anyone has come across this warning / error? This occurs when i ssh
> to my FreeBSD 9.0 System. any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Warning:
> /usr/share/games/fortune/freebsd-tips.dat: Too many open files in system
> [mavi at titan ~]$ su
> su: pam_start: system error
>
> Thanks / Regards
> Prabhpal

What does this command say on your system?

% sysctl kern.maxfiles kern.maxfilesperproc kern.openfiles

You may have exceeded the maximum number of open files
in the system. Maybe some ill-conceived program that doesn't
close non-needed connections, files, etc is at fault? It's easy
to open more and more files, and to gradually fill the open
files descriptor table in the kernel this way.

-cpghost.

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