Sun Java System Message Queue 4.3 Administration Guide

Setting the File Descriptor Limit

On the Solaris and Linux platforms, the shell in which a client or broker is running places a soft limit on the number of file descriptors that a process can use. In Message Queue, each connection a client makes, or a broker accepts, uses one of these file descriptors. Each physical destination that has persistent messages also uses a file descriptor.

As a result, the file descriptor limit constrains the number of connections a broker or client can have. By default, the maximum is 256 connections on Solaris or 1024 on Linux. (In practice, the connection limit is actually lower than this because of the use of file descriptors for persistent data storage.) If you need more connections than this, you must raise the file descriptor limit in each shell in which a client or broker will be executing. For information on how to do this, see the man page for the ulimit command.