Every 15 minutes exactly, in whatever terminal window(s) I have connected to my server, I’m getting these system-wide broadcast message:

Broadcast message from systemd-journald@localhost (Sun 2026-02-15 00:45:00 PST):  

systemd[291622]: Failed to allocate manager object: Too many open files  


Message from syslogd@localhost at Feb 15 00:45:00 ...  
 systemd[291622]:Failed to allocate manager object: Too many open files  

Broadcast message from systemd-journald@localhost (Sun 2026-02-15 01:00:01 PST):  

systemd[330416]: Failed to allocate manager object: Too many open files  


Message from syslogd@localhost at Feb 15 01:00:01 ...  
 systemd[330416]:Failed to allocate manager object: Too many open files  

Broadcast message from systemd-journald@localhost (Sun 2026-02-15 01:15:01 PST):  

systemd[367967]: Failed to allocate manager object: Too many open files  


Message from syslogd@localhost at Feb 15 01:15:01 ...  
 systemd[367967]:Failed to allocate manager object: Too many open files

The only thing I found online that’s kind of similar is this forum thread, but it doesn’t seem like this is an OOM issue. I could totally be wrong about that, but I have plenty of available physical RAM and swap. I have no idea where to even begin troubleshooting this, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

ETA: I’m not even sure if this is necessarily a bad thing that’s happening, but it definitely doesn’t look good, so I’d rather figure out what it is now before it bites me in the ass later

  • just_another_person@lemmy.world
    201·
    2 days ago

    Reduce the number of active connections, or the total number of active transfers available at once, and that will lower that number.

    If you’re POSITIVE your memory situation is in good shape (meaning you’re not running out of memory), then you can increase the max number of open files allowed for your user, or globally: https://www.howtogeek.com/805629/too-many-open-files-linux/

    Again: if you do this, you will likely start hitting OOMkill situations, which is going to be worse. The file limit set right now are preventing that from happening.

    • guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vipOPEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      I just reduced my global max connection from infinity to 500 (somehow that increased my upload speed?) and it reduced qbits shit by a couple thousand, but it’s still in the many thousands. I’m assuming the number on the left is literally just how many files it’s using, in which case, how could that ever get below 1024? Not to mention I have many other services that are also above 1024. (See below). In any case, I’m only using 14 GB of memory out of my 32 GB of ram and 16 swap, so I think it would be fine to increase the limit, but that does worry me a bit.

        18841 python3
  16294 qbittorre
  14064 docker-pr
  11900 Sonarr
   8940 Radarr
   8441 Cleanupar
   8246 Prowlarr
   6130 java
   5836 postgres
   3532 container
   2766 gunicorn
   1980 dockerd
      • graycube@lemmy.world
        11·
        2 days ago

        Your number of python file descriptors went up after that change. Have you looked at what python stuff is running? Something isn’t closing files or sockets after it is done with them.

        • graycube@lemmy.world
          71·
          2 days ago

          You can also look at how many network sockets you have open and where they are connecting. netstat -an will give you a quick look. lsof can help you figure out what is using those ports.

          • graycube@lemmy.world
            81·
            2 days ago

            If you really need that many connections there are some tcp tunables you can do to help them be more efficient.

            • guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vipOPEnglish
              2·
              20 hours ago

              I went to sleep last night after posting this and left a ssh connection open to see what it did in the morning when I woke up. And when I woke up and checked it out, I found that coincidentally it stopped doing the timer almost exactly as I went to sleep, yet I don’t think I was doing anything that would make that happen. I have no idea why it stopped, but it hasn’t started again either.

      • [object Object]@lemmy.world
        5·
        1 day ago

        somehow that increased my upload speed?

        Network hardware is sensitive to lots of small packets going over many connections — some cheap routers can straight up overheat from that. And especially if your WiFi router doesn’t support full-duplex connection, uploads will compete with downloads over the bandwidth — which includes metadata communication like “hey, how much of that torrent have you got?”