Re: "Too many open files" and reboot fail advice

John,

I also had (more than once) the "too many open files" problem.

Pierre Frisch gave me a solution that has worked for me 100% of the 
time,
although it had nothing really to do with "open files" in my view.

(It is just a workaround, really.)

He said:

>>>> I had a series of exchange with Apple and we fixed a couple of bug 
>>>> changed the process of wotaskd and monitor back to root and the 
>>>> machine appears to be back to the level it was before the update. I 
>>>> still have a concern with too many CLOSE_WAIT. There is something 
>>>> to fully under control in the wotask/monitor/OS interaction.

>> The root think is described in the mailing list it is really quite 
>> easy go in /System/Library/WebObjects/JavaApplications/wotaskd.woa/ 
>> and change the ownership of wotaskd and 
>> Contents/Resources/javawoservices.sh

Changing the ownership of wotaskd and javawoservices.sh to root fixed 
the problem for me.
I understand that changing these two things back to root leaves your 
system in a somewhat less secure state,
but I could not find any other way to fix the problem (I think they 
used to be owned by root, and then were changed to something else
to increase security. However, the change caused some people to have 
the "too many open files" problem.)
(The security issue arises, I assume, from wotaskd having more 
privileges than it really needs.)

Anyway, give it a try; it worked for me, and I have had to re-apply the 
workaround each time I have upgraded
the system.

- Matthew

> All,
>
> We are currently suffering the dreaded "Too many open files" problem 
> that I
> have now read about in many previous postings to this list. It has 
> happened
> since I moved to Panther.
>
> JavaMonitor fails to stop/start instances, the instances themselves 
> fill
> their log files with IOExceptions, too many open files.