Open and
Locked Files |
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Individual processes can open one or more files for reading
or writing, and it is not uncommon for a process to have many files
open at the same time; particularly in large database applications,
for example.
Furthermore, mail, database, and other applications often
require simultaneous access to a given file by two or more processes.
To prevent file or data corruption, a process that is altering the
contents of a file must be able to lock the file against conflicting
uses until it is safe to release control of the file.
Open and locked files require memory and other system resources.
These resources must be balanced against other system needs to maintain
optimum overall system performance. Use nflocks to
limit the combined total number of file locks that are available
system-wide to all processes at any given time.
Limits |
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Two parameters, maxfiles and maxfiles_lim,
respectively, govern the soft and hard limits on the number of files
a process can open simultaneously. nfile governs
the maximum number of files that can be open on the entire system
at any given time.
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