HP CIFS Server 3.0k Administrator's Guide version A.02.04

Overview of Kernel Configuration Parameters
The kernel configuration parameters, maxuser, nproc, ninode, nflocks and nfile are described below.
These are the kernel parameters that you must adjust to support a large number of clients on HP
CIFS.
• maxusers: the name of this kernel parameter is a misnomer as it does not directly control the
number of UNIX users that can logon to HP-UX. However, this kernel parameter is used in
various formulae throughout the kernel. In fact, the default values for nproc, nfiles and ninodes
are expressed in terms of maxusers.
• nproc: this kernel parameter controls the size of the process table. Its default formula is
(20+8*maxusers). On most systems the default value for this parameter is 21, which yields a
default value of 20+8*32 or 276 maximum processes supported. When this table fills up prior
to launching a process, the error message "proc: table is full" will appear on the console. It
will be viewable via the dmesg command.
• nfiles: this kernel parameter controls the size of the system file table and limits the total
number of open files in the system. Note that this affects each instance of an open file since
the same file opened twice would take up 2 entries in the system file table. This default
formula is (16*(nproc+16+maxusers)/10+32+2*(npty+nstrpty+nstrtel)). When this tables
becomes full, the console message “file: table is full” will appear on the console.
• ninode: this kernel parameters controls the size of the in-core inode table or the inode cache.
To improve performance, the most recently accessed inodes are kept in memory. The default
formula for this parameter is ((nproc+16+maxusers)+32+(2*npty)). Attempts to open a file
beyond the capacity of this table will result in the message “inode table full” being displayed
on the console.
• nflocks: defines the maximum combined total number of file locks that are available
system-wide to all processes at any given time. The default value of 200 will need to be
increased for HP CIFS Servers.
186 HP-UX Configuration for HP CIFS