We have received an Error received 'java.net.SocketException: Too many open files' Can someone help?

Question

We are running Jira 4.3.4, standalone installation

Jira was running slow and then hanging for some of our users. This is what we were able to pull off the logs. We restarter Jira to fix the problem to get back up and running. Can you help with what might be causing this?

This was the log file

JIRA Exception
11:26:55 AM: David Armstrong/AGIS: May 4, 2012 11:15:13 AM org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$Acceptor run
SEVERE: Socket accept failed
java.net.SocketException: Too many open files
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketAccept(Native Method)
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.accept(PlainSocketImpl.java:390)
at java.net.ServerSocket.implAccept(ServerSocket.java:453)
at java.net.ServerSocket.accept(ServerSocket.java:421)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.DefaultServerSocketFactory.acceptSocket(DefaultServerSocketFactory.java:61)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$Acceptor.run(JIoEndpoint.java:352)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

Radu Dumitriu · Answer

Kernel tuning (these depends on your OS) Edit: /etc/security/limits.conf, add lines: soft nofile 10240
hard nofile 10240 reboot. done.

CEDRIC ZABEL · Answer

Unfortunately, there could be a bunch of causes.  For instance, if you’ve greatly increased the default timeout, all the logged-in, un-timed-out users could be consuming resources causing you to hit the open files limit.  You could look at your system and see if you’ve done anything to the configuration that would increase the resources needed.  Or you could just work around it by increasing the number of open files allowed.

Oh, there’s an article in the Atlassian knowledge base about this: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAKB/Loss+of+Functionality+due+to+Too+Many+Open+Files+Error .  That might help you.