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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!news.acns.nwu.edu!moo.acns.nwu.edu!cjw From: cjw@nwu.edu (Christopher Wargaski) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: file table full !!! Date: 4 Oct 93 19:52:44 GMT Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA Lines: 51 Message-ID: <cjw.749764364@moo.acns.nwu.edu> References: <28df8iINNamd@mojo.eng.umd.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: moo.acns.nwu.edu Originator: cjw@moo.acns.nwu.edu cliffj@eng.umd.edu (Cliff Jones) writes: >Hello World, >I was working on a decstation and got the error FILE TABLE FULL. What does this mean >??? Right now my system is running slowwwwwww. Any tip world Ah hah! You too! I have a Sun Sparc 1+ running 4.1.1. I fear that it is begin over loaded because I get those errors as well. This is what I have surmised. ----------- There is a finite amount of space in a table that the kernel maintains for inodes. These inodes are directly related to file inodes--the kernel inode contains the file inode plus some other stuff. The problem is this. Some process or processes are opening many files, thus many file inodes need to be accessed by the kernel--so the kernel inode table begins to fill. Eventually the kernel inode table will fill up. At that point, in the kernel's infinite wisdom, it will say "Uh, there is a problem", and give that error that we saw. What can we do to figure out what is going on? What process(es) is/are the culprits? Let's use pstat -T to see what sort of usage we have: antioch 118 # pstat -T 156/800 files <----- The number of files you have available. 346/438 inodes 51/202 processes 7772/94316 swap ^ ^ | | | This is the limit set in the kernel. | This is what usage we have. /etc/pstat is a very verbose command. I am sure is quite helpfull once I can understand what the heck it tells. ;^) Right now, I will have to stare at the man pages while I try things out. I have most recently rebuilt the kernel, increasing my maxusers from 8 to 12, in hope of increasing the number of files that are able to be open. cjw -- Christopher J. Wargaski <-or-> Aspheric Artwork Sigh c-wargaski@nwu.edu; ACNS, DSS, RC ``The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.'' --Charles Darwin