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Too many open files

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Description

With a large number of cameras (>70), you may encounter Inotify limitations, then when adding a camera in the Docker container log (in the case of executor=docker ) or the server itself (in the case of executor=exec) you can see the message:

Error: too many open files

By default, Ubuntu has the following options:

sysctl fs.inotify

fs.inotify.max_queued_events = 16384
fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 128
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288

ulimit -n
10240

grep NOFILE /etc/systemd/system.conf
#DefaultLimitNOFILE=1024:524288

Solution

To increase the limits, add the following options to the /etc/sysctl.conf file:

sudo su
cat << EOF >> /etc/sysctl.conf
fs.inotify.max_queued_events = 16384
fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 10240
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288
EOF

in the file /etc/systemd/system.conf:

DefaultLimitNOFILE=10240:524288

and reboot the system.

Make sure the settings are applied:

ulimit -n
10240

sysctl fs.inotify
fs.inotify.max_queued_events = 16384
fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 10240
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288