); if (atomic_read(&unix_nr_socks) > 2 * get_max_files()) goto out; The function get_max_files() is a simple return of files_stat.max_files. files_stat.max_files is a signed integer and is computed in fs/file_table.c's files_init(). n = (mempages * (PAGE_SIZE / 1024)) / 10; files_stat.max_files = n; In our case, mempages (total_ram_pages) is approx 3,758,096,384 (0xe0000000). That leaves max_files at approximately 1,503,238,553. This causes 2 * get_max_files() to integer overflow. Fix is to let /proc/sys/fs/file-nr & /proc/sys/fs/file-max use long integers, and change af_unix to use an atomic_long_t instead of atomic_t. get_max_files() is changed to return an unsigned long. get_nr_files() is changed to return a long. unix_nr_socks is changed from atomic_t to atomic_long_t, while not strictly needed to address Robin problem. Before patch (on a 64bit kernel) : # echo 2147483648 >/proc/sys/fs/file-max # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max -18446744071562067968 After patch: # echo 2147483648 >/proc/sys/fs/file-max # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max 2147483648 # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-nr 704 0 2147483648 Reported-by: Robin Holt Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet Acked-by: David Miller Reviewed-by: Robin Holt Tested-by: Robin Holt Signed-off-by: Al Viro