Orchard Core 2.0.2 - Error after some calls to the API endpoints: Status:BadRequest Error: {\"status\":\"Error: - The configured user limit (128) on the number of inotify instances has been reached, or the per-process limit on the number of open file descriptors has been reached.\",\"item\":null}

[MarGraz]

Hi everyone,

in my Books microservice, which is a headless Orchard Core 2.0.2 app (I need to update it to the latest), I have some API endpoints used to retrieve books. However, after a few calls from the frontend, Orchard Core stops working and throws this error:

Status:BadRequest Error: {\"status\":\"Error: - The configured user limit (128) on the number of inotify instances has been reached, or the per-process limit on the number of open file descriptors has been reached.\",\"item\":null}

To make it working again I need to recreate the Docker container.

After searching online, it seems this issue is caused by the reloadOnChanges option for AppSettings being set to true (see this explanation). Additionally, it appears to primarily occur in non-Windows environments (see this). I'm using a Linux Docker container to host my Books microservice.

Does anyone know how I can set reloadOnChanges to false in my Program.cs?
@Piedone @MikeAlhayek, any suggestions? 🙏

Thank you

Below is my Program.cs where I retrieve the configuration to pass it to my handler:

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Services
    .AddOrchardCms()
    .ConfigureServices(services =>
    {
        // ------- Here I get the appsettings configuration because I need it in the Handler part
        ConfigurationModel config = builder.Configuration.Get<ConfigurationModel>();

        if (config == null)
        {
            throw new Exception("Was impossible to retrieve the appsettings.json configuration, that are necessary to instantiate the Handler classes. Please check the appsettings file.");
        }

        services.AddHttpClient();

        #region Add Handlers

        // Register BookHandler with dependencies injected
        services.AddScoped<IBookHandler>(sp =>
        {
            return new BookHandler(
                config.ExternalServices.UsersMicroserviceBaseUrl,
                config.ExternalServices.ErpService,
                sp.GetRequiredService<ILogger<BookHandler>>());
        });

        #endregion
    });

var app = builder.Build();

if (!app.Environment.IsDevelopment())
{
    app.UseExceptionHandler("/Error");
    // The default HSTS value is 30 days. You may want to change this for production scenarios, see https://aka.ms/aspnetcore-hsts.
    app.UseHsts();
}

app.UseHttpsRedirection();
app.UseStaticFiles();

app.UseOrchardCore();

// Remove in the API response the header "X-Powered-By: OrchardCore"
app.UsePoweredByOrchardCore(enabled: false);

app.Run();

[MarGraz]

I’m not sure if overwriting the appsettings and reloading them in Program.cs would be a proper solution.
Might Orchard Core overwrite the reloadOnChanges parameter again afterward?

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

// builder.Configuration.Sources.Clear(); // Remove current configuration sources - REMOVED because Docker was returning error with this
builder.Configuration
    .AddJsonFile("appsettings.json", optional: true, reloadOnChange: false) // Add the appsettings.json file without reloadOnChange
    .AddJsonFile($"appsettings.{builder.Environment.EnvironmentName}.json", optional: true, reloadOnChange: false) // As last configuration load the one based on the Environment
    .AddEnvironmentVariables();

builder.Services
    .AddOrchardCms()
    .ConfigureServices(services =>
    {
        ConfigurationModel config = builder.Configuration.Get<ConfigurationModel>();

        if (config == null)
        {
            throw new Exception("Was impossible to retrieve the appsettings.json configuration, that are necessary to instantiate the Handler classes. Please check the appsettings file.");
        }

[...]
 

[MikeAlhayek]

You could try increasing the limit of the container so it's higher than 128. Are you running lots of tenants on the server where you encounter this problem? Does your application cause lots of tenant reloads? You should write the application logs to a mounted volume so they are not lost during a crash and then check out the app logs for more clues to see why there are lots of file change notifications are happening. Does this happen with a specific tenant or all tenants?

[MarGraz]

Hi @MikeAlhayek, thank you for your reply.

I will respond to your points one by one:

1. I want to avoid increasing the 128 limit because I read that it consumes more memory. First, I want to understand the root cause that leads to this limit being reached;
2. Our Orchard Core Books microservice has only one tenant, which is the default one;
3. By Application Logs, do you mean the logs visible from the Docker console?

Thank you

[weirdyang]

have you tried using IOptions instead?

   builder.Services.Configure<ConfigurationModel >(
    builder.Configuration.GetSection("ConfigurationModel"));

   // your service
   BookHandler(IOptions<BookHandler> config)

[weirdyang]

@MarGraz
In one of the stackoverflow answers you shared, it mentioned not to call configurationBuilder.Build() more than once.

by using the IOptions pattern, you will inject your configuration class, this means you will not need to build configuration to get the variables to pass into your service constructor.

This is also how the services in orchardcore modules get their configuration, eg the e-mail module, and since these modules aren't causing you any issues, I would hope that it can be safely applied for your use case.

[weirdyang]

@MarGraz sorry for the double reply, also edited my answer to correct the typos

[MarGraz]

@weirdyang thank you, it seems to work, but I need to try it a bit more.
Two things to pay attention in this change:

1. builder.Services.Configure<ConfigurationModel >(builder.Configuration.GetSection("ConfigurationModel")); must be done before doing the builder.Services.AddOrchardCms()...., otherwise iinside the AddOrchardCms becomes readonly;
2. In the appsettings the root must be ConfigurationModel, otherwise the path will be not found, and values not binded automatically. Of course the ConfigurationModel class with the properties and objects must exists too.

Program.cs example:

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

// Done before the AddOrchardCms
builder.Services.Configure<ConfigurationModel>(builder.Configuration.GetSection("ConfigurationModel"));

builder.Services
    .AddOrchardCms()
    .ConfigureServices(services =>
    {
        services.AddHttpClient();
        
        [...]
        
        services.AddScoped<IBookHandler>(sp =>
        {
           // Get the ConfigurationModel root
            var config = sp.GetRequiredService<IOptions<ConfigurationModel>>().Value;

            return new BookHandler(
                config.MyService.Url, // Take the value you need
                config.MyService.Other,
                sp.GetRequiredService<ILogger<BookHandler>>());
        });
        
        [...]
  

Appsettings example:

  "ConfigurationModel": {
    "MyService": {
      "Url": "Pippo",
      "Other": "Pluto"
      }
   }

ConfigurationModel class example:

    public class ConfigurationModel
    {
        public ConfigurationModel()
        {
            MyService = new();
        }

        public MyServiceSection MyService { get; set; }
    }

    public class MyServiceSection
    {
        public MyServiceSection()
        {
            Url = string.Empty;
            Other = string.Empty;
        }

        public string Url { get; set; }
        public string Other { get; set; }
    }

Thank you

[weirdyang]

hope it works out! you could also modify your bookhandler to take in the IOptions<ConfigurationModel> and simplify configure services eg.

public BookHandler(IOptions<ConfigurationModel> config, ILogger<BookHandler> logger)
{
   
   // set properties here

}

// in startup

 .ConfigureServices(services => {
   services.AddScoped<IBookHandler,BookHandler>()
});

[MarGraz]

@weirdyang thank you for your reply ☺️

Currently, I am doing it as shown before, like this: var config = sp.GetRequiredService<IOptions<ConfigurationModel>>().Value;.

1. The purpose of passing IOptions as a parameter to my BookHandler, is to perform all the checks (like null check) inside the constructor, correct?
2. In my case, using var config = sp.GetRequiredService<IOptions<ConfigurationModel>>().Value;, I am not rebuilding the configuration every time, correct?

Thank you