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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.jb.com!monalisa.primelogic.com!user From: michelle@primelogic.com (Michelle Brownsworth) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: ifconfig limit reached? Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 21:45:03 -0700 Organization: PrimeLogic Communications Corp. Lines: 48 Message-ID: <michelle-2405972145030001@monalisa.primelogic.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: monalisa.primelogic.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:41575 Update on the problem and the solution: To reiterate, after I had added an IP alias for a virtual host to the network card, named choked and did a core dump, complaining bitterly about too many open files; none of the DNS zone files were loaded, so nslookup didn't even know the server's name. My first assumption, that there was a limit to the number of aliases that could be assigned to a network card, turned out to be a red herring. The problem was that I had exceeded the limit on the number of files open per process. The default limit for a shell process was set to 64, as shown by the following inquiries: From csh: wintermute% limit openfiles openfiles 64 From sh: wintermute# ulimit -n 64 [Note: Releases 2.2.x and 3.x.x might use "descriptors" rather than "openfiles." I'm using release 2.1.5 (yes, yes, I know--but it's rock-solid), which calls it "openfiles."] Because named needs one file descriptor per interface alias, and a few more are needed for overhead, the maximum number of file descriptors had been exceeded when the new alias was added. The solution was to increase the limit before the /etc/rc script started named. I'm reluctant to add stuff to the rc scripts directly, so I inserted the following lines in the Netconfig section of /etc/sysconfig, just above the named flags section: # Increase maximum number of file descriptors per process ulimit -n 256 (Admittedly, 256 is probably more than necessary, but a neighboring ISP's Linux-based server used 256 as the default, so I went for it.) After adding the new virtual's alias to netstart and rebooting, the DNS zone files loaded normally, and nslookup verified everything was finer'n frog hair. All's well that ends. Thanks to Steinar Haug and Inus Scheepers for pointing me in the right direction. .\\ichelle -------------------- Michelle Brownsworth System Administrator IMS, Inc.