[rabbitmq-discuss] RabbitMQ (branch bug21673) running out of file descriptors

Thu Feb 18 15:05:36 GMT 2010

Hi Andrey,

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 10:58:34AM +0300, Andrey Smirnov wrote:
> We're running RabbitMQ from branch bug21673 (built yesterday). We have
> a lot of non-persisten queues (2k - 10k+) that are created/destroyed
> all the time. Some queues have unconsumed messaged and they will get
> destroyed with unconsumed messages.
> 
> When file descriptor limit for RabbitMQ was left to default 1024 files
> it was dying in 2 hours. I've raised the limit to 10240 files and it
> worked for 16 hours and crashed.
> 
> Crash for clients looks like "INTERNAL_ERROR" error on connections.
> RabbitMQ is still running and eating 100% of CPU. Restarting RabbitMQ
> helps to revive it.

Many thanks for the bug report. The short version is that this is now
Fixed - if you pull again and rebuild, it should all "just work" now.
The long version is in the commit comment
(http://hg.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-server/rev/56a0daed8b4e). I can now
artificially limit Rabbit to approx 3 file descriptors, and it still
runs some fairly aggressive tests perfectly well. Note that whilst on
branch bug21673, Rabbit is able to very flexibly redistribute file
handles as necessary, this obviously doesn't apply to sockets. So you
should make sure you always have at least, say, 100 more file
descriptors available to Rabbit than you need sockets.

Please try retesting - provided you don't have more than about 900
simultaneous connections open, you shouldn't need to raise the ulimit
above 1024, though you might find performance improves if you do.

Do let us know how you get on.

Matthew