Chrome too many files open / crash / Sorry Jim

Question

When using Google Chrome I frequently get “Sorry Jim” tabs. The browser also frequently freezes and crashes.

Running it from terminal emulator show a long line of Too many open files:

[...:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.0A3O7D failed: Too many open files
[...:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(231)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.gr0r3Q failed: Too many open files 

Google Chrome (32-bit, not sure if it affects 64-bit).

Answer 1

Increase hard/soft limit.

/etc/security/limits.conf

Thus far a limit of 8192 seems to be enough. 4096 have proven to be to small.

Optionally only increase hard limit (if needed) and do:

ulimit -Sn 8192

from shell in which Chrome is started.

Note that the use of (the somewhat wide spread) way:

sudo sh -c "ulimit -n 8192 && exec su -i $LOGNAME"

might not be what one want, as it also strips your environment.