[[file-descriptors]]
=== File Descriptors

Elasticsearch uses a lot of file descriptors or file handles.  Running out of
file descriptors can be disastrous and will most probably lead to data loss.
Make sure to increase the limit on the number of open files descriptors for
the user running Elasticsearch to 65,536 or higher.

For the `.zip` and `.tar.gz` packages, set <<ulimit,`ulimit -n 65536`>> as
root before starting Elasticsearch,   or set `nofile` to `65536` in
<<limits.conf,`/etc/security/limits.conf`>>.

RPM and Debian packages already default the maximum number of file
descriptors to 65536 and do not require further configuration.

You can check the `max_file_descriptors` configured for each node
using the <<cluster-nodes-stats>> API, with:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
curl 'localhost:9200/_nodes/stats/process?pretty&filter_path=**.max_file_descriptors'
--------------------------------------------------
