Hi Jörg,

On Thu, 17 Feb 2022, Jörg Belger wrote:

> Is there a limit with file streams? I cannot open more than 238 on my macOSX. The 239th fails and Squeak runs with 100% cpu power. I changed then the method StandardFileStream>>open:forWrite: and removed the #retryWithGC:until:forFileNamed:, because it looked to me, that it does not much things. Now I get a <nil> back from the primitive.
>
> | directory streams |
> directory := FileDirectory default directoryNamed: 'Test'.
> directory assureExistence.
> streams := (1 to: 239)
> 	collect: [:index | directory fileNamed: 'test', index printString].
> streams do: #close

There is a limit on the maximum number of external semaphores provided by 
the VM. Each socket uses 3 external semaphores and each file uses one.
The default limit is 256 which is very conservative and I hope the next 
release will ship with at least 4096 as default.

Anyway, you can check the current value with

 	Smalltalk maxExternalSemaphores

and set it with

 	Smalltalk maxExternalSemaphores: 4096


Some care must be taken not to change the limit while signals are expected 
to be processed (e.g. when you have activity on those sockets/files), 
because there's a short period during the resize while the VM may 
fail to signal the semaphores.


Levente

>
> Jörg