Setting HP-UX Kernel parameters

When running at peak period, users were getting unixio.c.343 - "TOO MANY OPEN FILES, exiting".

Depending upon the number of users you have, the following sample kernel parameters *might* work for you ...

              4-users  16usrs  32users  64users
nfile            1000    4000     8000    16000
nflocks           500    4000     8000    16000
ninode            750    3000     6000    12000
maxfiles          512    2048     4096     8192
maxfiles lim     1024    2048     4096     8192
semmnu             30      48       96      192


nfile        - 1 for each file opened by each user on the system
nflocks      - nfile + 1 for each locked record on the system
maxfiles     - 1 for each file opened by a given user
semmnu       - 1 for each APPX session (user or background)

Customers need to add a lot of padding and figure out what they think they need. Requirements will vary with user load and the type of application being used.

These are starting values only, and depending on how complex your apps are, what else is going on on that system, how many users there are, etc., the proper values may be higher in your specific situation. Since memory is much cheaper and thus much more available these days, increasing these parameters beyond the base values given in the table above shouldn't have an adverse impact on your system, but start with the values above initially, and increase them if there are problems opening files, locking records, etc. (resource issues that indicate one of HP-UX's tables is too small for the amount of activity on the system).