Too many open files – Failed to initialize inotify: the user limit on the total number of inotify instances has been reached

Question

For Linux:

Check current value of max_user_instances:

$ cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_instances

increase that value:

$ echo 256 | sudo tee /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_instances

In order to make that change permanent you can always add a line to /etc/sysctl.conf:

fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 256

If your system has a /etc/sysctl.d directory, you would rather put your custom settings in a separate file like /etc/sysctl.d/60-local.conf.