How to increase limits on sockets on osx for load testing?

Question

I\'m creating a load tester that uses libev to create lots of open tcp connections to an app i\'m working on. Currently it bombs out at 256 connections, due to the nofiles l

Answer 1

Try running as root (e.g. do a "sudo -s" before running the ulimit command and your program).

Note that I'm not sure that 1-million-plus TCP sockets at once is realistically achievable (although I'm interesting in hearing about what happens when you try it ;^))

Also, check out this.

Answer 2

(answer updated to use -S as several commenters suggested)

$ sysctl kern.maxfiles
kern.maxfiles: 12288
$ sysctl kern.maxfilesperproc
kern.maxfilesperproc: 10240
$ sudo sysctl -w kern.maxfiles=1048600
kern.maxfiles: 12288 -> 1048600
$ sudo sysctl -w kern.maxfilesperproc=1048576
kern.maxfilesperproc: 10240 -> 1048576
$ ulimit -S -n
256
$ ulimit -S -n 1048576
$ ulimit -S -n
1048576

Answer 3

One more thing: Limit on ports is 65535. So you may not get as many as you want to.