[gentoo-user] dovecot + inotify max_user instances

[Tanstaafl]

Hello,

Last year Timo (the dovecot author) remoted into our server and migrated 
us from courier-imap to dovecot. One of the things we ran into 
afterwards was this warning in the logs:

> Warning: Inotify instance limit for user 200 (UID vmail) exceeded, disabling. Increase /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_instances

He solved it by doing:

echo 1024 > /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_instances

Then he said he was going to solve this permanently by changing the init 
script...

Well, my shiny new server encountered the same issue once it went under 
load this morning, so I had to dig out this solution - but obviously 
this will come back again the next time I reboot, so I want to find a 
permanent solution.

I guess I could manually modify my init script, but I'm clueless as to 
where or how.

If someone can help me figure out how to do this, I'll go open a bug to 
get this added to the gentoo init script permanently.

The current (gentoo) init script is:

> #!/sbin/runscript
> # Copyright 1999-2012 Gentoo Foundation
> # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 or
> later
> # $Header:
> /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/net-mail/dovecot/files/dovecot.init-r4,v 1.1
> 2012/12/01 10:40:49 eras Exp $
>
> extra_started_commands="reload"
>
> depend() {
>         need localmount
>         before postfix
>         after bootmisc ldap mysql ntp-client ntpd postgresql saslauthd
> slapd
>         use logger net
> }
>
> checkconfig() {
>         DOVECOT_INSTANCE=${SVCNAME##*.}
>         if [ -n "${DOVECOT_INSTANCE}" -a "${SVCNAME}" != "dovecot" ]; then
> DOVECOT_CONF=/etc/dovecot/dovecot.${DOVECOT_INSTANCE}.conf
>         else
>                 DOVECOT_CONF=/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
>         fi
>         if [ ! -e ${DOVECOT_CONF} ]; then
>                 eerror "You will need an ${DOVECOT_CONF} first"
>                 return 1
>         fi
>         if [ -x /usr/sbin/dovecot ]; then
>                 DOVECOT_BASEDIR=$(/usr/sbin/dovecot -c ${DOVECOT_CONF}
> -a | grep '^base_dir = ' | sed 's/^base_dir = //')
>         else
>                 eerror "dovecot not executable"
>                 return 1
>         fi
>         DOVECOT_BASEDIR=${DOVECOT_BASEDIR:-/var/run/dovecot}
>         DOVECOT_PIDFILE=${DOVECOT_BASEDIR}/master.pid
> }
>
> start() {
>         checkconfig || return 1
>         ebegin "Starting ${SVCNAME}"
>         start-stop-daemon --start --exec /usr/sbin/dovecot \
>                 --pidfile "${DOVECOT_PIDFILE}" -- -c "${DOVECOT_CONF}"
>         eend $?
> }
>
> stop() {
>         checkconfig || return 1
>         ebegin "Stopping ${SVCNAME}"
>         start-stop-daemon --stop --exec /usr/sbin/dovecot \
>                 --pidfile "${DOVECOT_PIDFILE}"
>         eend $?
> }
>
> reload() {
>         checkconfig || return 1
>         ebegin "Reloading ${SVCNAME} configs and restarting auth/login
> processes"
>         start-stop-daemon --signal HUP --exec /usr/sbin/dovecot \
>                 --pidfile "${DOVECOT_PIDFILE}"
>         eend $?
> }

Thx for any help...

Charles