Hi folks, The default setting of the kern.maxfiles sysctl, indicating the maximum number of files that may be open in the system, is controlled by the maxusers kernel config option. It is able to be explicitly configured in your kernel config with "options MAXFILES=integer" as well as being able to set a value on boot via /etc/sysctl.conf. On systems with larger amounts RAM the default value has long proven to be too low.
As a short term fix, if your system has 1GB of RAM or more the kern.maxfiles default is now 10,000 files and with 16GB of RAM or more the default is now 20,000 files. Consequently if you've manually configured your kern.maxfiles value, either via your kernel config file or /etc/sysctl.conf, to a number equal to or smaller than these new defaults you can remove that manual configuration if you desire. Note that a MAXFILES value explicitly configured in your kernel config file will always override the default. Longer term, I'll be looking at making a few of the default settings (at least maximum number of files, processes and vnodes, maybe others) scale better with RAM size. If anyone has had the need to change any of these, or indeed any other kernel tuneables, via their kernel config file or /etc/sysctl.conf from their default values please let us know the details (including your RAM size and general system usage type as well as the tuneable values) as this will help shape future defaults. Cheers, Simon.