[Dovecot] ulimit -n in start-script

Ben Morrow ben at morrow.me.uk
Thu Mar 21 03:01:53 EET 2013


At  1PM +0100 on 20/03/13 you (Patrick Westenberg) wrote:
> Peer Heinlein schrieb:
> 
> > Even on midrange-systems it's necessary to set "ulimit -n" to a higher
> > value then the system default of 1024.
> 
> Could this lead to this problem?
> 
>   Error: 
> file_dotlock_create(/var/mail/example.com/john.doe/Maildir/.Sent/dovecot-uidlist) 
> failed: No space left on device

Not on most systems. Reaching a ulimit -n limit usually causes open(2)
to fail with EMFILE (Too many open files) rather than ENOSPC (No space
left on device). ENOSPC is only supposed to be returned if the
filesystem has either run out of space altogether, or has run out of
inodes. (Incidentally, going over quota on a filesystem also has its own
errno, EDQUOT (Quota exceeded).)

However, check your system documentation, because some systems do
strange things.

Ben



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