Computing kern.maxfilesperproc and kern.maxfiles

Many thanks to Julien Charbon, a colleague of mine, for providing this information. This is specific to releng/8.3 because we currently utilize this version.

kern.maxfiles is derived from max.maxproc (max number of process) which is derived from max.maxusers (not the maximum number of users, but more a global order of magnitude of machine process/file descriptor usage). max.maxusers is derived from the amount of physical memory and capped up to 384:

sys/kern/subr_param.c:

        /* Base parameters */
        maxusers = MAXUSERS;
        TUNABLE_INT_FETCH("kern.maxusers", &maxusers);
        if (maxusers == 0) {
                maxusers = physpages / (2 * 1024 * 1024 / PAGE_SIZE);
                if (maxusers < 32)
                        maxusers = 32;
                if (maxusers > 384)
                        maxusers = 384;
        }

A machine with a large amount of memory, 72 GB for example, gets the maximum:

$ sysctl kern.maxusers
kern.maxusers: 384

in sys/kern/subr_param.c:

#define NPROC (20 + 16 * maxusers)
#ifndef NBUF
#define NBUF 0
#endif
#ifndef MAXFILES
#define MAXFILES (maxproc * 2)
#endif

[...]

     /*
      * The following can be overridden after boot via sysctl.  Note:
      * unless overriden, these macros are ultimately based on maxusers.
      */
     maxproc = NPROC;
     TUNABLE_INT_FETCH("kern.maxproc", &maxproc);
     /*
      * Limit maxproc so that kmap entries cannot be exhausted by
      * processes.
      */
     if (maxproc > (physpages / 12))
             maxproc = physpages / 12;
     maxfiles = MAXFILES;
     TUNABLE_INT_FETCH("kern.maxfiles", &maxfiles);
     maxprocperuid = (maxproc * 9) / 10;
     maxfilesperproc = (maxfiles * 9) / 10;

Thus:

kern.maxproc = (20 + 16 * maxusers) = (20 + 16 * 384) = 6164
kern.maxfiles = (maxproc * 2) = (2 * 6164) = 12328
kern.maxfilesperproc = (maxfiles * 9) / 10 = (12328 * 9) / 10 = 11095

The math confirmed:

$ sysctl kern.maxproc
kern.maxproc: 6164
$ sysctl kern.maxfiles
kern.maxfiles: 12328
$ sysctl kern.maxfilesperproc
kern.maxfilesperproc: 11095

Thus these low default maximum values are the result of a tentative from FreeBSD to “auto-tune” the default maximum from memory size. However by limiting the kern.maxusers to 384, it concerns only system with less 192 KB of memory (embedded system?).

We located this patch which has the effect of increasing these tunables. See below.

$ sysctl kern.maxfiles
kern.maxfiles: 98312
$ sysctl kern.maxfilesperproc
kern.maxfilesperproc: 88480

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