[CentOS] Squid for CentOS 7 and available file descriptors

Wed Apr 6 16:03:06 UTC 2016
Carlos A. Carnero Delgado <carloscarnero at gmail.com>

Hi,

I'm installing a Squid instance for a large (ish) group of users. In the
past I've had to increase the number of available file descriptors for the
Squid process in order to avoid hitting the limits (and disrupting the
service).

It seems that the packaged Squid for CentOS 7 has a hardcoded value of
16386 maximum file descriptors
<https://git.centos.org/blob/!rpms!squid.git/c6361861418913e2a375a3507da79ace09e0dfa2/SPECS!squid.spec#L182>.
The relevant portion of that spec file is

  ⋮
  --with-aio \
  --with-default-user="squid" \
  --with-filedescriptors=16384 \
  --with-dl \
  --with-openssl \
  ⋮

Why this limit? Is there any merit to opening a bug or enhancement request
somewhere? Other than that, what could I do next? A custom Squid build?

Thanks a lot,
Carlos.