how to set ulimit / file descriptor on docker container the image tag is phusion/baseimage-docker

Question

I need to set the file descriptor limit correctly on the docker container I connect to container with ssh (https://github.com/phusion/baseimage-docker)

Already trie

Answer 1

The latest docker supports setting ulimits through the command line and the API. For instance, docker run takes --ulimit <type>=<soft>:<hard> and there can be as many of these as you like. So, for your nofile, an example would be --ulimit nofile=262144:262144

Answer 2

Here is what I did.

set ulimit -n 32000 in the file /etc/init.d/docker

and restart the docker service

docker run -ti node:latest /bin/bash

run this command to verify

user@4d04d06d5022:/# ulimit -a

should see this in the result

open files (-n) 32000

[user@ip ec2-user]# docker run -ti node /bin/bash
user@4d04d06d5022:/# ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 0
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 58729
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 64
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 32000
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 10240
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) 58729
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks                      (-x) unlimited

Answer 3

The docker run command has a --ulimit flag you can use this flag to set the open file limit in your docker container.

Run the following command when spinning up your container to set the open file limit.

docker run --ulimit nofile=<softlimit>:<hardlimit> the first value before the colon indicates the soft file limit and the value after the colon indicates the hard file limit. you can verify this by running your container in interactive mode and executing the following command in your containers shell ulimit -n

PS: check out this blog post for more clarity

Answer 4

If using the docker-compose file, Based on docker compose version 2.x We can set like as below, by overriding the default config.

ulimits:
  nproc: 65535
  nofile:
    soft: 26677
    hard: 46677

https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/

Answer 5

I have tried many options and unsure as to why a few solutions suggested above work on one machine and not on others.

A solution that works and that is simple and can work per container is:

docker run --ulimit memlock=819200000:819200000 -h <docker_host_name> --name=current -v /home/user_home:/user_home -i -d -t docker_user_name/image_name

Answer 6

Actually, I have tried the above answer, but it did not seem to work.

To get my containers to acknowledge the ulimit change, I had to update the docker.conf file before starting them:

$ sudo service docker stop
$ sudo bash -c "echo \"limit nofile 262144 262144\" >> /etc/init/docker.conf"
$ sudo service docker start