Snow Owl Docs
7.x
7.x
  • README
  • Getting started
    • Basic Concepts
    • Installation
    • Explore Snow Owl
      • Check Health
      • List available Code Systems
      • SNOMED CT
      • Import RF2 distribution
      • Search SNOMED CT
      • Create a Concept
      • Version SNOMED CT
      • Export SNOMED CT
    • Conclusion
  • Set up Snow Owl
    • Installing Snow Owl
      • Installing Snow Owl with .zip or .tar.gz
      • Installing Snow Owl with RPM
      • Installing Snow Owl with Debian Package
      • Installing Snow Owl with Docker
    • Configuring Snow Owl
      • Setting JVM options
      • Logging configuration
      • Elasticsearch configuration
    • Important Snow Owl configuration
    • Important System configuration
      • Disable swapping
      • File descriptors
      • Virtual memory
      • Number of threads
      • Tweaking for performance
    • Starting Snow Owl
    • Stopping Snow Owl
    • Configuring security
      • Configuring a file realm
      • Configuring an LDAP realm
    • Configuring monitoring
    • Configuration reference
  • Extension Management
    • Extensions and Snow Owl
    • Scenarios
      • Single Edition
      • Single Extension Authoring
      • Multi Extension Authoring
    • Development
    • Releases
    • Upgrading
    • Integrations
  • API
    • Core API
    • SNOMED CT API
      • Branching
      • Compare
      • Commits
      • Concepts
      • Descriptions
      • Relationships
      • Reference Sets
      • Classification
      • Importing RF2
      • Exporting RF2
    • CIS API
    • FHIR API
      • CodeSystem
      • ValueSet
      • ConceptMap
  • Backup and Restore
    • Curator
  • Migrate from 6.x
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  1. Set up Snow Owl
  2. Important System configuration

File descriptors

This is only relevant if you are running Snow Owl with an embedded Elasticsearch and not connecting it to an existing cluster.

Snow Owl (with embedded Elasticsearch) uses a lot of file descriptors or file handles. Running out of file descriptors can be disastrous and will most probably lead to data loss. Make sure to increase the limit on the number of open files descriptors for the user running Snow Owl to 65,536 or higher.

For the .zip and .tar.gz packages, set ulimit -n 65536 as root before starting Snow Owl, or set nofile to 65536 in /etc/security/limits.conf.

RPM and Debian packages already default the maximum number of file descriptors to 65536 and do not require further configuration.

Last updated 5 years ago