[Dovecot] dovecot died

[Marten Lehmann]

Hello,

> On Suse...
> # find /proc/sys | grep file
> /proc/sys/fs/file-max
> /proc/sys/fs/file-nr
> 
> # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
> 50716

# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
102592
# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-nr
19755   0       102592

well, more than 100.000 concurrent filehandles seem to be a lot. But if 
I'm doing an "lsof", I can find 18 filehandles per imap-process, like:

imap      32703  nobody  cwd       DIR      104,4      4096     934141 
/mailboxes/s
imap      32703  nobody  rtd       DIR      104,2      4096          2 /
imap      32703  nobody  txt       REG      104,4    568944    2572335 
/imap/dovecot-1.0.beta3/libexec/dovecot/imap
imap      32703  nobody  mem       REG      104,2    106397      33036 
/lib/ld-2.3.4.so
imap      32703  nobody  mem       REG      104,2   1454462      33048 
/lib/tls/libc-2.3.4.so
imap      32703  nobody  mem       REG      104,2     15324      33071 
/lib/libdl-2.3.4.so
imap      32703  nobody    0u     unix 0xc4d82880             46130422 
socket
imap      32703  nobody    1u     unix 0xc4d82880             46130422 
socket
imap      32703  nobody    2w     FIFO        0,7             46130423 pipe
imap      32703  nobody    3u      CHR        5,0                 1518 
/dev/tty
imap      32703  nobody    4r      CHR        1,9                  440 
/dev/urandom
imap      32703  nobody    5u      CHR      136,6                    8 
/dev/pts/6 (deleted)
imap      32703  nobody    6r     FIFO        0,7             46130424 pipe
imap      32703  nobody    7w     FIFO        0,7             34371569 pipe
imap      32703  nobody    8w     FIFO        0,7             46130424 pipe
imap      32703  nobody    9r     FIFO        0,7             46130425 pipe
imap      32703  nobody   10w     FIFO        0,7             46130425 pipe
imap      32703  nobody   11u      REG      104,4       296     934811 
/mailboxes/s/Maildir/dovecot.index.log

So if some people 100 people are keeping 3 concurrent imap-connections 
idle (which is default with Mozilla Mail), the 54000 filehandles are 
opened. And the server also does some nfs-stuff und pop3 and I guess 
there are more than 100 people keeping connections idle.

So how can I limit this? I can't always wait for the imap-server to die 
so I can start it again.

Regards
Marten Lehmann