[collectd] Too many open files

[Florian Forster]

Hi János,

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 03:27:42PM +0200, János Prepuk wrote:
> I see the following notification in the logfile:
> plugin_notification_meta_free: n == NULL!
> plugin_notification_meta_free: n == NULL!

hm, this is kind of a unnecessary warning. I've fixed the appropriate
place in the Exec plugin nonetheless [0].

> exec plugin: pipe failed: Too many open files
> .
> .
> exec plugin: pipe failed: Too many open files

> Notification: severity = FAILURE, host = x01.switch, plugin = snmp, type =
> if_std_traffic, type_instance = FastEthernet0_37, message =
> x01.switch/snmp/if_std_traffic-FastEthernet0_37 has not been
> updated for 683 seconds.

It looks like you're using the SNMP plugin. How many hosts do you query?
The SNMP plugin currently keeps a file handle open for each host. You
may therefore run into limits set by the system. You can check that
using “ulimit -a” or “ulimit -n”.

You can also check what kind of file handles the daemon has open using
“lsof” or similar.

> As I didn't notice it, there aren't data about interfaces of these
> host in this period.

This is kind of unexpected, but a file handle starvation can lead to
many weird results I guess …

Hope this helps, regards,
—octo

[0] <http://git.verplant.org/?p=collectd.git;a=commitdiff;h=7f71f1b7a38d7b50af44f403b79aa034b3882f2a>
-- 
Florian octo Forster
Hacker in training
GnuPG: 0x91523C3D
http://verplant.org/
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