Too many open file handles

Question

I\'m working on a huge legacy Java application, with a lot of handwritten stuff, which nowadays you\'d let a framework handle.

The problem I\'m facing right now is

Answer 1

I would start by asking my sysadmin to get a listing of all open file descriptors for the process. Different systems do this in different ways: Linux, for example, has the /proc/PID/fd directory. I recall that Solaris has a command (maybe pfiles?) that will do the same thing -- your sysadmin should know it.

However, unless you see a lot of references to the same file, a fd list isn't going to help you. If it's a server process, it probably has lots of files (and sockets) open for a reason. The only way to resolve the problem is adjust the system limit on open files -- you can also check the per-user limit with ulimit, but in most current installations that equals the system limit.