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

Dear all,

Thank you all for such a wonderful support. Hats off to all :)

Few times I came across imap login issues where new users will not be allowed to login. /var/log/mail.err shows the error below Aug 12 07:57:46 mail dovecot: dovecot: pipe() failed: Too many open files Aug 12 07:57:46 mail dovecot: dovecot: Temporary failure in creating login processes, slowing down for now Aug 12 07:58:46 mail dovecot: dovecot: pipe() failed: Too many open files Aug 12 07:59:46 mail dovecot: dovecot: pipe() failed: Too many open files Aug 12 08:00:46 mail dovecot: dovecot: pipe() failed: Too many open files

I have a dovecot (V 1.2.9) +postfix (V 2.7.0) setup on ubuntu 10.04

# ulimit -Hn 1024

# ulimit -Sn 1024

# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max 1238548

# cat /proc/pidof dovecot/limits | grep 'Max open' Max open files 1024 1024 files

Please advice how to get rid off this.

Fasil.