[asterisk-dev] Asterisk Open File Limit

[Matthew J. Roth]

Matt Florell wrote:
> What is the default open file limit in Asterisk and where is it defined?
Matt,

You need to change the maximum number of open file descriptors available 
to a process via ulimit.  I make all ulimit changes in the init script 
AND limits.conf.  That way they're applied in both of the following 
scenarios:

1) Asterisk is started automatically at boot.
2) Asterisk is started manually from a login prompt after a crash or 
maintenance downtime.

Increasing the maximum number of file descriptors can be done by adding 
the following lines to limits.conf (where <user> is the user you run 
Asterisk as):

<user>   soft   nofile   65536
<user>   hard   nofile   65536

And adding the following line to Asterisk's init script (in your case 
'start_asterisk_boot.pl'), immediately prior to starting Asterisk itself:

ulimit -n 65536

I've solved a good number of Asterisk scalability issues, so feel free 
to contact me off-list if you run into any more.

Matthew Roth
InterMedia Marketing Solutions
Software Engineer and Systems Developer