[Mailman-Users] mailman locking up with "too many files open"

[Ian Johnson]

Hello,

I've been running a mailman list (for broadcast only) lately, and 
recently had a post that jammed up the system. Mailman would respond to 
other list requests, but the admin pages for the list in question would 
not appear, and the list itself was unresponsive. This is the error 
message that I see throughout the error log:

Jun 12 20:15:28 2006 qrunner(8679): libkrb5.so.3: cannot open shared 
object file: Too many open files in system
Jun 12 20:15:31 2006 qrunner(8769): Traceback (most recent call last):
Jun 12 20:15:31 2006 qrunner(8769):   File "/var/mailman/bin/qrunner", 
line 270, in ?
Jun 12 20:15:31 2006 qrunner(8769):   File "/var/mailman/bin/qrunner", 
line 230, in main
Jun 12 20:15:31 2006 qrunner(8769):   File 
"/var/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 70, in run
Jun 12 20:15:31 2006 qrunner(8769):   File 
"/var/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Runner.py", line 94, in _oneloop
Jun 12 20:15:31 2006 qrunner(8769):   File 
"/var/mailman/Mailman/Queue/Switchboard.py", line 158, in files
Jun 12 20:15:31 2006 qrunner(8769): OSError :  [Errno 23] Too many open 
files in system: '/var/mailman/qfiles/news'
<mailto:mailman-users at python.org>
Three changes may have contributed to this problem:

1. list went from 4000 to 6800 members
2. the email sent out had a somewhat large attachement (~300k)
3. I recently turned on footer customization to allow user-specific 
unsubscribe instructions at the bottom.

It seems like I should either:
    1. increase max-open-file limit on system
   or
    2. turn off footer customization (if this would, in fact, solve the 
problem)

Any help or advice much appreciated.

Ian

-- 

Ian Johnson, MoiaGroup
ian at moiagroup.com
http://www.moiagroup.com
Phone: 520-628-1654
Fax: 520-628-1717
AOLIM, Yahoo: ianjohn27