Too many open files

[strycat]

I'm using Linux Mint 13 Maya with KDE.

Up until late January everything was fine. However since then about once every 7-10 days, my computer would become unresponsive or wouldn't disengage the screen saver. Today I was logged in remotely via ssh and saw what I think was the problem or rather another symptom of the problem.

I got the following error on every command except for a very few: "Too many open files in system"

After some research I found something that said to do a kill -- -1 and then look at dmesg for what else to kill and eventually uninstall.

the kill command did allow me to start issuing commands again. I was able to sudo -s and then dmesg gave the following output:

[ 14.158935] tg3 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex
[ 14.158940] tg3 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX
[ 14.159269] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
[ 24.752023] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
[91784.766637] plugin-containe[3562]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f9cbfd26f2f sp 00007fff3e2f5bd0 error 4 in plugin-container[7f9cbfd1c000+10000]
[93876.726677] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[93904.041401] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[93924.041390] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[93943.478566] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[93954.041363] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[93984.041359] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94003.476095] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94014.041359] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94044.041361] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94063.477609] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94074.041388] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94094.041381] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94120.892681] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94134.041371] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94154.041387] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94194.041357] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94214.041393] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94232.976641] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94234.041387] VFS: file-max limit 193600 reached
[94827.383226] SGI XFS with ACLs, security attributes, realtime, large block/inode numbers, no debug enabled
[94827.392118] SGI XFS Quota Management subsystem
[94827.428232] JFS: nTxBlock = 8192, nTxLock = 65536
[94827.496922] NTFS driver 2.1.30 [Flags: R/O MODULE].
[94827.591989] QNX4 filesystem 0.2.3 registered.
[94827.684146] Btrfs loaded

I'm wondering where i go from here. I'm not sure plugin-container is actually the culprit. Most of the time I never run firefox and in at least two cases I know firefox wasn't running when it had a problem in the past. Plus uninstalling firefox isn't really an acceptable option.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[strycat]

I'm continuting to have this problem. From a reboot not doing anything it takes about a day to a day and a half to happen.

Here's another sample of what appears in /var/log/syslog

Mar 11 22:23:32 valgaav kernel: [698146.940214] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached
Mar 11 22:23:59 valgaav kernel: [698173.388035] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached
Mar 11 22:24:17 valgaav kernel: [698191.994414] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached
Mar 11 22:24:29 valgaav kernel: [698203.388026] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached
Mar 11 22:24:49 valgaav kernel: [698223.388064] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached
Mar 11 22:25:09 valgaav kernel: [698243.388042] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached
Mar 11 22:25:29 valgaav kernel: [698263.388054] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached
Mar 11 22:25:49 valgaav kernel: [698283.388042] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached
Mar 11 22:25:59 valgaav kernel: [698293.388040] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached
Mar 11 22:26:19 valgaav kernel: [698313.388060] VFS: file-max limit 193601 reached

Please someone help.

[Orbmiser]

Searching google with "VFS: file-max limit reached" will point you in the right direction I believe.
Can't post the results link as too long to post here.
.