Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!dsl.pitt.edu!pitt!speedy.cs.pitt.edu!jonathan From: jonathan@speedy.cs.pitt.edu (Jonathan Eunice) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Is there a limit to create sockets on UNIX?? Message-ID: <8290@pitt.UUCP> Date: 2 Aug 90 17:29:34 GMT References: <25027.26ad5a50@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <2913@awdprime.UUCP> <3760@auspex.auspex.com> Sender: news@pitt.UUCP Reply-To: jonathan@speedy.cs.pitt.edu (Jonathan Eunice) Organization: University of Pittsburgh Computer Science Lines: 21 Guy Harris (guy@auspex.auspex.com) writes Too many open files" really means "too many open file descriptors in this process"; a socket in any family uses a file descriptor... Yup, the per-process file descriptor limit is the problem. This limit varies from 20 to 64 to 256 in some systems. While true that most UNIX systems are limited by static resource limits, not all are. Known counterexample: AIX 3.1 for the RS/6000 (limit = 2000). Possible counterexamples: System V Release 4 and Apollo DomainOS. Future counterexample: OSF/1. While not widely delivered today, the clear trend is making UNIX resource allocation dynamically scalable. A widespread interim solution is increasing the maximum limits. (Eg, Sun's recent increase of the per-process open file table to 256 entries, from 64.)