[Lxc-users] Many containers and too many open files

[Gary Ballantyne]

On 15/08/11 19:52, Jäkel, Guido wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> Going back through the list, I couldn't find whether this has been resolved.
>>
>> I had a similar problem today with a little over 40 containers:
>>
>> # lxc-start -n gary
>> lxc-start: Too many open files - failed to inotify_init
>> lxc-start: failed to add utmp handler to mainloop
>> lxc-start: mainloop exited with an error
>> lxc-start: Device or resource busy - failed to remove cgroup '/cgroup/gary'
>>
> Dear Gary,
>
> did you (re-)configure  /etc/security/limits.conf  on the lxc host to have an adequate value for filehandles in such an environment? E.g.:
>
> 	[...]
> 	*               hard    nofile          65536
> 	*               soft    nofile          65000
> 	[...]
>
> Greetings
>
> Guido

Thanks Guido.

I didn't know about that. I made the change you suggested (there was a 
slight snag for ubuntu: 
http://serverfault.com/questions/235356/open-file-descriptor-limits-conf-setting-isnt-read-by-ulimit-even-when-pam-limit 
). ulimit is pasted below.

Unfortunately, I am still getting the same errors with a little over 40 
containers.

Any further ideas?

Cheers

Gary

# ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 20
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 16382
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 64
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 65000
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) unlimited
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks                      (-x) unlimited