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3-4: Set open file limits

Ubuntu and other UNIX-like systems have a ulimit shell command that's used to set resource limits for users. One of the limits that can set is the number of open files a user is allowed to have. Pocket nodes will have a lot of files open at times. So we'll need to increase the default ulimit for the user account pocket runs under.

Increasing the ulimit​

Before increasing the ulimit, you can check the current ulimit. To do that, run the following command:

ulimit -n

Now let's increase the ulimit to 16384 with the following command:

ulimit -Sn 16384

Note: The -Sn option is for setting the soft limit on the number of open files.

Finally, let's check the new ulimit:

ulimit -n

Note: The -n option is for getting the limit for just the number of open files.

Permanent settings​

Using the above method for setting the ulimit will only keep the change in effect for the current session. To permanently set the ulimit, you can do the following:

  1. Open the /etc/security/limits.conf file.

    sudo nano /etc/security/limits.conf

  2. Add the following line to the bottom of the file:

    pocket           soft    nofile          16384

  3. Save and exit.

Resources​

Last updated on by Steve Tingiris