On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Christopher Browne
<cbbrowne at ca.afilias.info> wrote:
> 1024 isn't exactly a small number of files, so it's a bit of a surprise
> to get hit by this.  If you're running database backends and slons under
> a single postgres user, it's conceivable that the competition might be
> heading towards the limit, though 1024 is a pretty large limit.

The error doesn't distinguish between process (or user) out of file
handles and system out of file handles.  I've had the latter happen to
me.  For all we know the whole system was out of file handles.