Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] "too many files open"

From: Lewis Pennock <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 99 15:27:02 -0600

On 12/14/99 2:33 PM sat wrote:

>Try MacOS 9.   The number of allowed open files has increased dramatically.

Yes, we had to do this for other reasons as well.  OS 9 increases the 
number of files open from around 350 to thousands.    As a side note, if 
you search
 http://archives.mac-mgrs.org/  for "too many" or whatever, you will see 
several thread about this.  Here is my summary which I found on the Mac 
Manager's archive at this link:

 <http://archives.mac-mgrs.org/1999/19990601153448.html>

Subject
           Summary- to many files open error 
 From
           Lewis Pennock <[email-masked]> 
 Date
           1 Jun 99 15:34:48 -0500 
 No real resolution here, except for a clean install, and that's a maybe. 
 I got more questions about what my responses to this problem were than 
 suggestions for solving it, but here they are:

 The Math: She has too many fonts open. A Mac can only have 384 files 
 open at once. 
 She may have "only" 25 suitcases open in ATM or Suitcase or Font Reserve 
 or whatever.

 People blamed Font Reserve and ATM for opening up all the fonts in the 
 system folder on startup, necesitating your minimizing those fonts to 
 just the system fonts and rebuilding your font databse (For The Record, 
 we had already stripped down people's system Font Folders)

 Also for the record, this happened with both ATM Deluxe and Suitcase. We 
 are thinking about migrating to Font Reserve and a font server, but 
 that'll have to wait until I have more time.

 One person said:

 "It has something to do with apple sys 8.6. I get an error after a bit 
 over 600 files in a directory, it happens in all applications that I 
 open to date. The error is something to the effect that all of the 
 files will not be displayed but the file is saved ok and everything 
 seems to work fine."

 But I am talking about something else here, not the open and save dialog 
 box or anything like that. 

 One said:

 "Is it Quark 3.3.2? And, do you have a hard drive larger than 4gigs?
 If so, remember that Quark 3 has a problem with those large hard drives."

 No, we are using Quark 4.04 all on G3's with at least 128 Megs Ram, all 
 with at least 6 gig drives, and a 400 MHZ ASIP 6 server with several 
 Ultra Wide Drives in a RAID Level 5 HFS+ formatted volume as the server.

 I was sent here too: 
 http://archives.mac-mgrs.org/1999/19990315182839.html

 That helped, but when the problem occurs, she quits everything else and 
 just has necessary fonts open and it still happens again. I double 
 checked her Suitcase settings (and her ATM Deluxe settings before that)

 It is not a corrupted font, at least I don't think so: we re-copied a 
 master font foler that works fine on other people's computers, locked 
it, 
 and the problems continue.

 Thanks for all the responses, and let me know if anyone has any further 
 information on this since it wasn't really resolved, and so many of you 
 wrote me with similar "me too, but I never figured out how to fix it" 
 responses. I'll post another summary if necessary.

 -Lewis

 My Original post:

 > One user has been having a constant problem regarding too many files
 > open, error -42. I thought it was a font/Quark problem back in December
 > when I first posted this question to the Quark list, but the same 
person
 > is having the same problem. On the quark list I was told that ATM Delux
 > was the culprit, but now this user it using suitcase and still having
 > problems: If they have more than a few things open, it says "too many
 > files open (-42) whenever she tries to open something. She can quit an
 > app, open up the file, and then open that other app back up again, but
 > when that luck runs out she has to restart. This happens several times
 > each day.
 >
 > 233 G3, 190 megs ram, OS 8.6. Could bad memory cause this? When I
 > first installed her memory upgrade, in part to cure this problem, a few
 > months ago it had bus problems booting, but then I switched dimms 
around
 > and it worked fine.
 >
 > Any ideas? Some of my posts to the Quark list are below.
 >
 > -Lewis

 --
 Lewis Pennock
 [email-masked]
 http://www.lewis.net

 -----------------> Post QUESTIONS and SUMMARIES only!! 
<------------------
 Get answers to Mac questions at the MM home page: 
http://www.mac-mgrs.org/
 Search the Macintosh Manager's list archives: 
http://archives.mac-mgrs.org/
 Still confused? Read the FAQ!: 
http://www.mac-mgrs.org/mm/mac-mgrs-FAQ.html

--
Lewis Pennock
[email-masked]
http://www.lewis.net

---

From: "P T Withington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 09:19:28 -0500

I feel your pain.  I have a client with the same problem, a graphics user with 8.5 on a G3, Quark/Photoshop/etc, many fonts, but all managed by ATM, not in fonts folder, she is very careful to only enable fonts she is using, but still has the problem...  I am trying to upgrade her to MacOS 9.

My personal theory is that it is the proliferation of shared libraries that is causing this file open limit.  My client never saw this problem in 8.1, but then, most of her apps were a generation older then.