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What Causes "File Table Exceed Limit" Error?

The message “File Table Exceed Limit” is caused by a programming bug. Elliott reserves an internal table that allows handling of up to 200 open files at the same time.  If your particular Elliott application exceeds this limit, then you will get the “File Table Exceed Limit” message.  

In any Elliott application, it is just not possible to open more than 200 files at any given moment even if you do a multiple-level drill down.  The reason this message can still appear is because one of the Elliott programs has a bug, which causes the program to open a file but does not close it when it is done and exits that program.  We call this situation a “file leak.”  After the Elliott application calls this program over and over again for a while, the system leaves a lot of open files, and eventually you will exceed the 200 open file limit and see this message.  When you get this message, you will be given an opportunity to see a list of open files.  If you choose to see it and print out that list, it will help to debug the system.  You can send that information to our support staff to help identify the problem. If your program has been customized, you should give this information to your developer and get their involvement for further debugging.

When you get this "File Table Exceed Limit" message and exit Elliott, you typically won't be able to easily duplicate the same problem when you come back into the program again.  This is because it will take a while to build the file leak to the point where it exceeds 200 open files.

One utility in Elliott that can help to debug this problem is to use the Ctrl-Shift-O key, which will produce a list of open files.  The following is an example of a window that appears when you press Ctrl-Shift-O at the Elliott main menu level.  The files in the attached example are open by Elliott's System Manager.  But if you see additional files that repeat themselves over and over again (usually at the end of this list), that is a “file leak.”  If you can identify the process you perform that causes this list to grow, then it will help us to investigate further why that process/program did not close the file.


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