Too many open files

[David Evans]

I deleted all my inactive ports. I then ran this command:

script bigbuild.log sudo port -pdk upgrade --force installed  +universal

in an effort to build all my ports universal.  The -k option was used to
keep the builds in case I had to run the command again.

After a few hours of compilation, ports started failing with "too many
open files"
errors.

Eg:

./libtool: cannot make pipe for command substitution: Too many open files

I tried the command again with the same result except that it  was much
quicker
due to the already built ports.

Viewing the memory usage with Activity Monitor showed only a few MB of free
memory.  Whether this is the cause I do not know.  The virtual memory
used by
tclsh was around 550 MB and was slowly increasing.

System:
iMac Intel  Core 2 Duo, 2GB ram.
Snow Leopard 10.6.2
Xcode 3.2.1 (1613)
Port 1.8.1

I need universal libraries in an effort to build Gnome, although at the
moment
this is stymied by xulrunner-devel failing to build.  I have 641 ports
installed.