Error "Too many open files" in pdflatex

Question

When compiling a latex document with 15 or so packages and about five includes, pdflatex throws a "too many open files"-error. All includes are ended with \endinput. Any ideas what might cause the error?

The error seems to depend on how many packages are used (no surprise...); however, this is not the first time I use this many packages, while I've never encountered such an error before.

@axel_c: This is not about linux. As you may or may not know, LaTeX is also available on windows (which just happens to be what I'm using right now).

Answer 1

This could be caused by a low value in your 'max open file descriptors' kernel configuration. Assuming you're using Linux, you can run this command to find out current limit:

cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max

If the limit is low (say, 1024 or so, which is the default in some Linux distros), you could try raising it by editing /etc/sysctl.conf:

  fs.file-max = 65536

Details may differ depending on your Linux distribution, but a quick google search will let you fix it easily.

Answer 2

What is this command giving you:

$ ulimit -n

You might want to increase it by editing /etc/security/limits.conf file.

Answer 3

Have a look at these threads from the pdftex mailing list:

• Error message: Too many open files.
• Too many files open