More Processes

[mikebw at bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

David Cogley wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 DC> A linux application can only create 240 processes and claims
 DC> that it needs to be able to create 320 processes.  How do I
 DC> increase this limit? 

Linux stores its process table as a chain of inodes, so you have to increase
the filesystem limits in the kernel source.  You need to bump up "NR_OPEN" in
fs.h and in limits.h, and also bump up "OPEN_MAX" in limits.h.  The usual
change is from 256 to 1024.  Of course, you will need to recompile.

Note that this patch above only makes the internal Linux tables bigger, which
will suffice for process count.  However, if you need to increase the actual
number of files accessible to a process, you need a more extensive patch:

   http://www.linux.org.za/filehandle.patch.linux

 DC> At work, we have a Sun E4500 SMP "production machine" with 8 
 DC> CPUs, 4.5 GB RAM and 2.5 TB of disk array.  There is no 
 DC> "development machine".

That does seem a little on the large side.

 DC> I'm hoping to purchase a 4-processor linux box with 512 MB RAM 
 DC> and a few GB of SCSI disk space.  However, since I'll be 
 DC> spending my money, I'd like to work out the operating system 
 DC> issues on my Pentium uniprocessor machine first.

If it was the company's money, you should just get another Sun box.
 
-- Mike


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