[Dovecot] dovecot: pipe() failed: Too many open files

[Timo Sirainen]

On Dec 18, 2009, at 4:47 PM, JW wrote:
> I've researched this problem a number of times, usually I see suggestions to 
> increase ulimit.
> 
> I've done this a number of times, all the way up to:
> 
> ulimit -n 8192
> 
> I've put that in the init script right above the daemon start line.

What exactly is the "daemon start line"? Many Linux distros override ulimit in their internal scripts. If you're using Linux, you could check if dovecot process really has 8192 limit:

cat /proc/`pidof dovecot`/limits | grep 'Max open'