Where o where have my file descriptors gone

[alex at darke.net (Alexander Darke)]

Greetings folks. I'm fairly new to the area, and am looking forward to 
getting involved with the local lugs in the area here, as they have always 
been a source of fun and learning elsewhere in my past. :o)

That being said, I really hate that my first post to this list has to be a 
question, but I've been up all night fighting with a particular problem and 
I've reached the end of my rope....am hoping someone here can loan me a few 
extra feet (and not to hang myself with :o) )

I've got a box that I do admin work on...this box is currently pushing the 
300 domain mark. And lo and behold, if we've not run out of file 
descriptors and had apache puke in a major way. No biggie, I knew there 
were ways to push the number of descriptors higher so I began like I always 
do, with a web search.

Everything from "echo "4096" > /proc/sys/fs/file-max" right down to 
actually editing limits.h and fs.h in /usr/src/linux/include/linux and 
recompiling the kernel (per some info I found on 
http://www.bb-zone.com/Proc/). Nothing seems to change the hard set 1024 
descriptors per process number...

So currently, I have to reboot the box, log in, do a ulimit -n 4096, THEN 
start apache, and everything is fine.

Am I just missing something really obvious here? Is there a way to change 
permanently the hard set number of file descriptors available to a process? 
Anyone out there done this? Faced this problem? Made it better? Any advice, 
words of wisdom, or lots of coffee accepted.

Looking forward to meeting you folks,
Alex

ps: redhat 6.2, kernel 2.2.14.  output of lsof shows apache pushing roughly 
1045, which is how I'm pretty certain despite everything I've done that 
there is still a 1024 set somewhere that I've not managed to change yet.

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