dovecot - Nov 2009 - Can't start dovecot from heartbeat

I get the following error:

Fatal: epoll_create(): Too many open files (you may need to increase
/proc/sys/fs/epoll/max_user_instances)

Works fine if I start it by hand, I'm guessing it has to due with the
environment heart starts it in?

My first thought was to do exactly what the message suggests, but my
kernel doesn't appear to define max_user_instances, but there is a
max_user_watches.

I'm running 1.2.8, by the way.  But I had a similar problem with earlier
version too.

John

On Nov 29, 2009, at 7:13 AM, John Gray wrote:
> I get the following error:
> 
> Fatal: epoll_create(): Too many open files (you may need to increase
> /proc/sys/fs/epoll/max_user_instances)
> 
> Works fine if I start it by hand, I'm guessing it has to due with the
> environment heart starts it in?
That happens immediately at startup? Yeah, there's something not set up
correctly.
> My first thought was to do exactly what the message suggests, but my
> kernel doesn't appear to define max_user_instances, but there is a
> max_user_watches.
What Linux kernel version? Looks like the whole /proc/sys/fs/epoll/ doesn't
exist in latest CentOS (2.6.18 kernel), even though epoll_create man page refers
to it..

Anyway, I can't really help much. What heartbeat are you talking about?
linux-ha.org's? Maybe they have some mailing list and can answer this.