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

[JW]

In the past few months we've been having increasing problems with dovecot 
timing out pop3 logins.

As best I can tell it gets to the point where it won't accept any new pop3 
logins.

The error in the mail log is:

dovecot: pipe() failed: Too many open files

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.

So far it hasn't helped.

In addition, when looking at lsof, it doesn't seem like we're anywhere near 
the actual limit. for example, last time dovecot only had 1032 files open.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing the error? Or what else I can 
try to figure this out?

Thank you,

	JW

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System Administrator - Cedar Creek Software
http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com