How to fix the Apache Error: Too many open files

If you run into a problem with the dreaded “Too many open files” error message in Apache which caused it to crash and left it in a non-startable state. Most of the times this is becuase of a lack of available file descriptors on your system - most systems are shipped with a default of 1024 - in a shared hosting environment with several hundreds of domains, this can easily be passed. You can try this step in order to avoid having to recompile your system to allow for a higher FD (File Descriptor) amount

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Edit the limits.conf file
   nano -w /etc/security/limits.conf
2. Change (or add) the last two lines
   * soft nofile 32768
   * hard nofile 32768
3. Restart APACHE
   /sbin/service httpd restart

Tips & Warnings

• While this will not solve your problems long term, it will help you for now. Eventually if you keep adding new domains or files into apache you may need to recompile your sources to have a higher file descriptor limit.