Increase file-max and nofile limit in Linux for MQ Installation

While installing MQ 8 on Linux, I encountered a warning to increase file-max and nofile.

WARNING: System settings for this system do not meet recommendations for this product

         See the log file at “/tmp/mqconfig.4192.log” for more information

[[email protected] server]# cat /tmp/mqconfig.4192.log
mqconfig: V3.7 analyzing CentOS Linux release 7.0.1406 (Core) settings for WebSphere MQ V8.0 System V Semaphores
semmsl     (sem:1) 250 semaphores                     IBM>=32           PASS
semmns     (sem:2) 0 of 32000 semaphores     (0%)   IBM>=4096         PASS
semopm     (sem:3) 32 operations                     IBM>=32           PASS
semmni     (sem:4) 0 of 128 sets              (0%)   IBM>=128         PASS
System V Shared Memory
shmmax             4294967295 bytes                   IBM>=268435456   PASS
shmmni             5 of 4096 sets             (0%)   IBM>=4096         PASS
shmall             3424 of 268435456 pages   (0%)   IBM>=2097152     PASS
System Settings
file-max           5568 of 201932 files       (2%)   IBM>=524288       FAIL
Current User Limits (root)
nofile       (-Hn) 4096 files                         IBM>=10240       FAIL
nofile       (-Sn) 1024 files                         IBM>=10240       FAIL
nproc       (-Hu) 0 of 15891 processes       (0%)   IBM>=4096         PASS
nproc       (-Su) 0 of 15891 processes       (0%)   IBM>=4096         PASS

Are you experiencing the same issue?

IBM MQ recommends having minimum configuration as follows: –

• fs.file-max = 524288
• nofile = 10240

Configure fs.file-max

• Take a backup of /etc/sysctl.conf
• Open /etc/sysctl.conf with text editor and add the following

fs.file-max = 524288

• Save the file. To load this setting immediately, you have to execute sysctl –p command else it will be loaded in next system reboot.

sysctl –p

Configure nofile

• Take a backup of /etc/security/limits.conf
• Open /etc/security/limits.conf with a text editor and the following

mqm             hard   nofile         10240
mqm             soft   nofile         10240

• Save the file.

Start the MQ installation again and should be fine.