IBM AIX 7.3 – Common Problem 117 – Diagnosis and Fix

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Service fails with ‘Too many open files’ (EMFILE).

Environment & Reproduction

Long-running daemon leaks sockets/FDs over time.

Root Cause Analysis

Per-process nofiles limit reached; OS-wide may also be tight.

Quick Triage

Run procfiles -n PID and lsof | wc -l for trends.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Compare with ulimit -n and chdev -l sys0 -a maxuproc.

Solution – Primary Fix

Raise per-user nofiles in /etc/security/limits and restart service.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Patch application to close FDs; use procfiles to confirm.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

procfiles count stable; service no longer hits EMFILE.

Rollback Plan

Revert limits if memory pressure increases.

Prevention & Hardening

Add monitoring of open FDs in nmon/topas custom view.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Pairs with TCP TIME_WAIT exhaustion on busy servers.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for aix-7.3.

View all aix-7.3 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

IBM Docs: limits, procfiles.