Setting open file limits in Linux

If you have a high volume of users logged in to IBM® Sametime® Advanced running on a Linux® server, you might encounter too many files exception messages.

About this task

After 1000 or more users log in, the following exception starts appearing in the SystemOut.log, and no more users can log in:
[3/3/08 11:09:46:701 EST] 0000109d exception E com.ibm.ws.wim.adapter.ldap.
LdapConnection getDirContext CWWIM4520E The 'javax.naming.CommunicationException:
pir02pc27.westford5.notesdev.ibm.com:389 [Root exception is java.net
.SocketException:Too many open files]' naming exception occurred during
 processing.
[3/3/08 11:09:46:738 EST] 0000109d exception E com.ibm.ws.wim.adapter.ldap.
LdapConnection getDirContext com.ibm.websphere.wim.exception.WIMSystemException:
CWWIM4520E The 'javax.naming.CommunicationException: pir02pc27.westford5.
notesdev.ibm.com:389 [Root exception is java.net.SocketException: 
Too many open files]' naming exception occurred during processing.

This problem is caused when a high number of concurrent users get a connection to the Sametime Advanced server. Java™ opens many files and Sametime Advanced uses a lot of file descriptors. Eventually, the server runs out of file descriptors. You can fix this by editing the file descriptor limit in the limits configuration file in Linux.

Procedure

  1. Use a text editor and open /etc/security/limits.conf.
  2. Add the following lines to set these limits for all users. 
    *  soft    nofile          65535
*  hard    nofile          65535
  3. Save the file.
  4. Stop and restart the computer running the server.