file system growing with open files

[Agneta Schick]

> The following message was sent by Agneta Schick
> <schick at SDAC.HANNOVER.BGR.DE> on Fri, 25 Feb 2005 10:52:42 +0100.
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > We have a system problem on a machine with a mapserver application:
> "too many
> > open files"
> > A list of open files shows it is always the same file: the source file
> for a
> > reference map (.png) which is in read mode and never closed.
> > This could be a version problem because we have a similar application on
> > another machine with no such problems.
> >
> > We run
> > MapServer version 4.2.3 OUTPUT=PNG OUTPUT=JPEG OUTPUT=WBMP SUPPORTS=PROJ
> > SUPPORTS=FREETYPE INPUT=TIFF INPUT=EPPL7 INPUT=OGR INPUT=GDAL
> INPUT=SHAPEFILE
> >  with mapscript
> >  perl 5.8.3
> >  mod_perl-1.29
> >  apache_1.3.27
> >  on Solaris 9.
> >
> > We have set rlim_fd_cur=1024 and rlim_fd_max=4096 to no avail.
> >
> >
> > On the machine without this problem we run
> > MapServer version 3.6.5 OUTPUT=PNG OUTPUT=JPEG OUTPUT=WBMP SUPPORTS=PROJ
> > SUPPORTS=TTF INPUT=TIFF INPUT=EPPL7 INPUT=JPEG INPUT=OGR INPUT=GDAL
> > INPUT=SHAPEFILE
> >  with mapscript
> >  perl 5.6.1
> >  mod_perl-1.27
> >  apache_1.3.22
> >  on Solaris 8.
>
> Agneta,
>
> A couple of thoughts.
> Are you sure the files are just being left open or are there a load of
> open connections (sockets) to the webserver itself that the processes
> are waiting on to finish?
> My understanding as of the 4.2+ series of MS is that Perl's garbage
> collection will close things when a cgi finishes but when running under
> mod_perl you probably need to explicitly undef the map object to trigger
> the cleanup.?
> I also noticed that the default max number of files per user is lower in
> solaris 9 then in solaris 8.
>
> Lowell

We explicity increased the number of files for solaris 9.
We have no open connections and the map object is explicitly 'undef'.
The perl script has 'use strict' and 'use warnings' but the apache error_log
is empty.
I have reread and tested the perl script but see no reason for
the reference map not being closed.
Still the count of open files (reference map source) increases by one for each
interaction.

If the MapServer reads the source data for the map as well as source data
for the reference map why does only the reference map remain open ?

Agneta