kern.maxfiles can be raised or lowered based upon your system requirements. This variable indicates the maximum number of file descriptors on your system. When the file descriptor table is full, ``file: table is full'' will show up repeatedly in the system message buffer, which can be viewed with the dmesg command.

Each open file, socket, or fifo uses one file descriptor. A large-scale production server may easily require many thousands of file descriptors, depending on the kind and number of services running concurrently.

kern.maxfile's default value is dictated by the MAXUSERS option in your kernel configuration file. kern.maxfiles grows proportionally to the value of MAXUSERS. When compiling a custom kernel, it is a good idea to set this kernel configuration option according to the uses of your system. From this number, the kernel is given most of its pre-defined limits. Even though a production machine may not actually have 256 users connected as once, the resources needed may be similar to a high-scale web server.

Note: As of FreeBSD 4.5, setting MAXUSERS to 0 in your kernel configuration file will choose a reasonable default value based on the amount of RAM present in your system.