[Dovecot] Too many open files

[Harrison Metzger]

Hello,

I have dovecot installed and it works for about 3 hours then I get this
error (in /var/log/maillog):

Jan  8 08:42:53 stu dovecot: auth(default): pam(grossmsm,69.131.100.47):
pipe() failed: Too many open files

I set pam_limits.so to allow the user 'dovecot' to have 8192 open files, and
I also changed:

login_process_size = 512

However, it still wont work for more than a few hours. When I run:

lsof -p `ps -o pid= -C dovecot-auth`

I get:

[...]
dovecot-a 1385 root  248u  sock        0,5         374241289 can't identify
protocol
dovecot-a 1385 root  249u  sock        0,5         374241391 can't identify
protocol
dovecot-a 1385 root  250u  sock        0,5         374243642 can't identify
protocol
dovecot-a 1385 root  251u  sock        0,5         374241701 can't identify
protocol
[...]

And the number followed by a u keeps growing. As of writing this email that
number is now at 274u. Is dovecot not closing its fd's or something?

Harrison Metzger