I am working on a school project where I had to write a multi-threaded server, and now I am comparing it to apache by running some tests against it. I am using autobench to help with that, but after I run a few tests, or if I give it too high of a rate (around 600+) to make the connections, I get a "Too many open files" error.
After I am done with dealing with request, I always do a close() on the socket. I have tried to use the shutdown() function as well, but nothing seems to help. Any way around this?
Answer
There are multiple places where Linux can have limits on the number of file descriptors you are allowed to open.
You can check the following:
cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
That will give you the system wide limits of file descriptors.
On the shell level, this will tell you your personal limit:
ulimit -n
This can be changed in /etc/security/limits.conf - it's the nofile param.
However, if you're closing your sockets correctly, you shouldn't receive this unless you're opening a lot of simulataneous connections. It sounds like something is preventing your sockets from being closed appropriately. I would verify that they are being handled properly.