influxdata / influxdata/influxdb

Low ulimits cause bad experiences for some users on OSS 2.x

Open
#22,896 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
needs/more-info
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
31.7k
Forks
3.7k
Avg merge
13h 37m
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Description

__Proposal:__
We should mitigate problems caused by low ulimits. Ideas:

* Reduce the number of shards by default (so fewer files are created by default)
* Add ulimits to `/metrics` endpoint
* Warn in the logs (and UI?) when file ulimits are low

__Current behavior:__
Users start up a bucket with a 30 day retention policy and get daily shards. Many linux distros set the max `ulimit -n` to 1024 . 30 days * ~20 files per shard when TSI is enabled creates ~600 files, so with their first bucket users are right up against their ulimits.

__Desired behavior:__
TBD

__Alternatives considered:__
Document that users should increase their ulimits as part of setup

__Use case:__
Many users get inscrutable "too many files" errors in the logs, which causes much frustration and also data issues as new files cannot be written.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

The issue names no source file, test, or entry point. Start by reproducing a 30-day bucket with low file limits and inspect shard file creation, `/metrics`, and log behavior; a contribution is complete only after maintainers define and validate a concrete mitigation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
linux
Domain
databases, observability, operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.