Max open files limit

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System wide open files limit

To check system wide files limit:

$ cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
4875932
$ sysctl -a | grep file-max
fs.file-max = 4875932

To change system wide files limit:

$ echo "fs.file-max = 4875932" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
$ sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf

User level open files limit

To check hard/soft limits:

$ ulimit -Hn
40960
$ ulimit -Sn
40960

To change hard/soft limits:

$ vi /etc/security/limits.conf
*  hard nofile 40960
*  soft nofile 40960

Process level open files limit

To check the max open files per process:

$ cat /proc/sys/fs/nr_open
1048576

To check the specific process max open files limit:

$ cat /proc/`pidof <process-name>`/limits | egrep "Limit |Max open files"
Limit                     Soft Limit           Hard Limit           Units
Max open files            524352               524352               files

Sometimes, application process may need change the max open files limits on the fly.

In Docker container, the process does not have the permission to do so by default.

Docker provides the following two ways to extend Linux capabilities for the container processes.

  • –cap-add Add Linux capabilities
  • –cap-drop Drop Linux capabilities
  • –privileged Give extended privileges to this container

When using the “–privileged” option is not allowed for security reason, we can have fine grain control over the capabilities using –cap-add and –cap-drop.

For example, if we want to grant the container process the permission to change max open files limit on the fly, we can use the following capability option.

  • SYS_RESOURCE - Override resource Limits.

We can pass this option to the target docker container.

$ docker run --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN ...

References