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
How much memory does an open descriptor really use? If it’s a whole kilobyte, 20000 open files would take 20 MB of memory.
Check ulimit to see the max number of open files on your system, you may even be able yo change it
Depends on how the code is using it. You could look deeper, but that’s not what OP is asking for help with.
It’s not about how big they are really, it’s about how many can be open at a time. Without sane limits, then anything is a ticking time bomb.