dial unix /tmp/padapter.usk: socket: too many open files

Error Definition

There are times, when your application may throw error like the following in Linux:

dial unix /tmp/padapter.usk: socket: too many open files

It could only contain the following, without relating the fast message:

socket: too many open files

How to Fix

This error appears because Linux file system puts a limit of amount of open files you may use at a time. It is calculated based on a variable system set is called ‘file-max’. File System also keeps a variable called ‘file-nr’ to count the number of file you have in usage. To quickly look at your usage, you may run the following:

[root@server-sg ~]# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-nr
4512    0       265535

The first number is the amount of file descriptions in use in your linux system. Here the last number is your hard limit and the second number is your soft limit. The hard limit is your file-max. To know your file-max value, you may run the following:

[root@server-sg ~]# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
265535

As we see, the limit is set to 265535 and the usage is 4512. If the usage goes up for some reason, for example an infinite loop on the cache creation, you may run out of file system open limit and hit the error. To set the value fir file-max, we will take sysctl.conf in consideration.

First open sysctl.conf file with the following:

nano /etc/sysctl.conf

Add the following line and save:

fs.file-max = 524280

This will increase your open file limit to 524280. Now to reflect the change immediately, you need to run the following:

sysctl -p

You should be done now.