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

  • guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vipOPEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    I was running the same things I always have, which is just a large collection of services in docker. 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.

    • 0xtero@beehaw.org
      2·
      2 days ago

      large collection of services in docker.

      Ok, so the error message would indicate lack of available file descriptors and that probably depends on what your docker services are doing at the time and if you’ve set any ulimits on your containers.

      So what are your host vs. docker ulimits? If you haven’t set any container ulimits, it’ll just use the global from the host.

      ulimit -Hn

      Longer explanation: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/limit-file-descriptors