Error: you may be over quota: Bad file descriptor

You'll want to check your storage usage as well as iNode count. This error is related to quota.

Usually an SEO is good at searching, well, search engines.

• "you may be over quota: Bad file descriptor"

Possible Solutions

1) Increase memory limit
2) Plugin deactivation
3) Change web hosting
4) Upgrade web hosting plan.

The error could be caused by a number of things. So yes you will need to try all the suggested solutions you found when Googling the problem.

No-one will be able to tell you a single solution that will fix this (except by sheer lucky guess).

There is simply not enough information to do that specifically. And even what you explain my a not be 100% accurate. That is not an attack on you that is simply my experience from supporting end users for over 30 years

Therefore you are likely to be given a number of possible solutions that may fix the issue and try out each one until the issue is resolved.

From what you say you tried to edit a file (.htaccess). In practice mucking up .htaccess files can give you all sorts of problems. However if you restored the original file (which I don't think you did..I think you re-edited the same file back).

So tip for the future: always make a copy of the .htaccess file before editing. That way you can be sure you have restored the original file if it all goes wrong.

So assuming in this case you have reset everything back to as it was then the error message is saying you have exceeded your (hosting storage) quota.

Even though you feel you have put things back as they were things like temp files etc. can have been added. Automatic updates may have happened in the background. And you don't know exactly when your hosting checks your quotas. It may not be instant but possibly scheduled every few hours.

Also what type of hosting do you have:

1.Shared/Unlimited hosting (a badly misnamed service by all host suppliers)
2.A specific quota hosting. Maybe purchased from a reseller.
3.VPN - Personal server with specific quota limits.
4. Dedicated server -Personal server with specific quota limits.

In 1. above you will have limits. There will be a "fair use/acceptable use" policy and that will set the limits and you will need to search your own host support for those limits. Of course you could raise a support ticket and ask them what that error means and what to do about it. They simply tell you the solution there and then.


One of the things that catch most people out is the inode number. For Hostgator for instance it is max 100,000 (banned at 250,000).

This basically means the number of files and folder on the server. That includes the system files, log files, temp files, images, html pages and everything else you can think of (and more). This is almost always the issue with over quota and is true for all hosting types except Dedicated Servers.

To check for the number of files see your hosts support KB. Usually in cPanel.

To fix that simply delete some unwanted files. This normally means you have too many web sites on one hosting account. Get another hosting account and move some of your web sites over to that.

Most hosting packages will have a maximum disk quota (MB/GB size). When exceeded (or possibly within 10% of the max) you can star to get OVER QUOTA errors when trying to save files. The solution is as above. Move or remove files.


Is this a WordPress site? If so then there is an outside chance that your change was co-incidental or that something youhave not mentioned has change the WO site in some way.

With any WP site is it always worth following a default process to see where an issue may lay.

99.99% of the time it is plugins. Either new/updated or out of date after a WP installation update.

Easy check. Just rename the wp-content/plugins directory to pluginsSTOP (or similar). WP will now run without plugins. If error goes way then problem is a plugin).

One other thought is that the memory for QWP site can be limited in the wp-config.php.
The line in your wp-config.php will look something like this

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );


I think you would get a different error message but still worth checking if all else fails.