Changing the kernel settings

HBase is a database running on Hadoop, and just like other databases, it keeps a lot of files open at the same time. Linux limits the number of file descriptors that any one process may open; the default limits are 1024 per process. To run HBase smoothly, you need to increase the maximum number of open file descriptors for the user, who started HBase. In our case, the user is called hadoop.

You should also increase Hadoop's nproc setting. The nproc setting specifies the maximum number of processes that can exist simultaneously for the user. If nproc is too low, an OutOfMemoryError error may happen.

We will describe how to show and change the kernel settings, in this recipe.

Getting ready

Make sure you have root privileges ...

Get HBase Administration Cookbook now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.