Max open files per process

Question

What is a maximum open files count in Mac OS X (10.6) per process?

ulimit said than 256, sysctl said 10240, but my test program can create 9469 (under gdb), 10252 (w

Answer 1

I came across a relevant error when running some python script on my mac. The error was complaining about the limit of open files.

I was actually quite surprised to see ulimit -n telling me 256.

If you end up here to fix this, next logical step is to increase the limit.

How to increase that limit

To complement the answer by Dmitry I will link the following gist with the solution (worked for me on Mac OSX Catalina).

The linked above recipe will instruct you how to increase the limit.

/Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxfiles.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxproc.plist

After applying the load.sh and a system rebot, I got ulimit -n saying 524288. This has made by python script happy. GL!