143923 - Error message setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE): Invalid argument upon startup

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: Build Config, defect)

Description

[Christian Schmidt]

When I run Mozilla, I get the following error message upon startup:

$ ./run-mozilla.sh 
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE): Invalid argument
Cannot exceed hard limit for open files

After that Mozilla starts up as expected and runs appearently without problems.


This sounds like it has something to do with "ulimit". These are the current
limits (I did not set them explicitly, so they must be the default settings on
this system):

$ ulimit -a
core file size (blocks)     5000
data seg size (kbytes)      unlimited
file size (blocks)          unlimited
open files                  100
pipe size (512 bytes)       10
stack size (kbytes)         8192
cpu time (seconds)          unlimited
max user processes          100
virtual memory (kbytes)     500000


I just downloaded, gunzipped and untarred Mozilla in my homedir (as a regular
user) and then started it.

I am not too familiar with Solaris, so if you would like me to provide further
information about my system, you will need to tell me how to retrieve the
informatione.


Using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.0rc1) Gecko/20020418

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Over to NSPR; that seems to be the only thing in a mozilla install matching
"setrlimit"

Comment 2

[Wan-Teh Chang]

The error messages

  setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE): Invalid argument
  Cannot exceed hard limit for open files

come from the following code in the InstallUnixSignalHandlers()
function in mozilla/xpfe/bootstrap/nsSigHandlers.cpp:
 
220     if (setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, &rl) < 0) {
221         perror("setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE)");
222         fprintf(stderr, "Cannot exceed hard limit for open files");
223     }

Mozilla's main() function calls InstallUnixSignalHandlers().

Comment 3

[timeless]

100 seems rather small. can you change your limit?

we might end up just relnoting this.

Comment 4

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

Yes, 100 is far too low for the number of components that mozilla tries to open;
not to mention any tmpfiles or downloaded files.  The setrlimit call is
attempting to reset the open files soft-limit to 512.  Your system isn't
allowing that so you will need to use ulimit to reset the number of open files.
 I don't recall the exact command but `man ulimit` should tell you.

Comment 5

[Christian Schmidt]

> 100 seems rather small. can you change your limit?

No, appearently I am not allowed to change it:

$ ulimit -Hn 1000
bash: ulimit: cannot modify limit: Not owner


I'll try to convince the system administrator here to raise the limit.

Thanks.

Comment 6

[Jon Granrose]

verified invalid.

Comment 7

[Roland Mainz]

This info needs to go into the release notes.

Question:
What is the recommended _minimum_ amount of open-files-per-process required to
run mozilla+mailnews+editor successfully ?

Comment 8

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

512 is the minimum and recommended value.

Comment 9

[Roland Mainz]

cls:
Do we have any recommendations for the other limit/ulimit values like:
- data seg size (kbytes)      
- file size (blocks)          
- stack size (kbytes)              
- virtual memory (kbytes)     
?

Comment 10

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

I don't know of any other recommended values.