Too Many Open Files error on Posit Workbench

Problem

You may see errors in logs similar to the below when using Posit Workbench:

[rsession-<username>] ERROR system error 24 (Too many open files)

Solution

It’s a good idea to use a command like lsof to check and see what processes are currently using a large number of file descriptors. Alternatively, we can increase the limit on the number of open files for the affected user.

To do so, you will need to modify your /etc/rstudio/rsession-profile configuration file with the below (you may need to create this file if it doesn’t exist):

# /etc/rstudio/rsession-profile
ulimit -n 4096

It’s worth noting that this file will need 755 permissions. You can run the following command to set this:

chmod 755 /etc/rstudio/rsession-profile

Save the above file, and then restart the Workbench and Launcher services:

sudo rstudio-server restart

sudo rstudio-launcher restart

Once the R session has restarted, you should now see this value in effect by running the following commands in the R terminal:

system("ulimit -n")

OR

system("ulimit -a")

Note that you may need to increase the ulimit value above to more than 4096 if you are still seeing the issue!