Troubleshooting the Linux Editor issues

This page lists the known issues for the Linux Unity Editor and provides tested solutions.

Unity Editor crashes with Pipe error ! message

Opening projects with large number of assets crashes the Editor and logs a Pipe error ! message. The error message appears in the terminal if you opened the Editor via the terminal, otherwise it’s logged in the Editor.log file located in ~/.config/unity3d directory.

Cause

The error message is logged when the project reaches the maximum number of open files limit.

Solution

Increase the maximum open file limit in the Unity Editor session in one of the following ways:

• Increasing the maximum open file limit in the current Editor session
• Increasing the maximum open file limit system wide

Increase the maximum open file limit current Editor session

If you’re using a terminal to open the Editor, then you can increase the maximum open file limit in the current Editor session by following these steps:

1. In the terminal window, check the current maximum open file limit by using following command:

   ulimit -a
   

   This increases the soft limit of the maximum number of open files and the value of the soft limit can’t exceed the hard limit.

2. Check the hard limit to make sure you’re not exceeding the hard limit by using the following command:

   ulimit -Hn
   

3. Once you know the hard limit, increase the soft limit using following command such that it doesn’t exceed the hard limit:

   ulimit -n <desired maximum open files value>
   

   For example, to increase the soft limit to 4096, use the following command:

   ulimt -n 4096
   

4. Confirm the soft limit change by using either ulimit -a or ulimit -Sn command, and then use the same terminal to launch the Unity Editor.

Increase the maximum open file limit system wide

To increase the maximum open file limit system wide, follow these steps:

1. Locate the limits configuration file in the following location: /etc/security/limits.conf.

2. Modify the following line: [UserName] soft nofile [Desired soft open file limit] where [UserName] can be the username of the desired user, root, or * to include all the users excluding root. You can also increase the hard limit in this file, but make sure that you don’t exceed the hard limit set by the system.

   
   Following is an example of how the limits.conf file located in /etc/security/limits.conf looks after adding the soft and hard limit values to increase the open file count.

   * soft nofile 4096
   * hard nofile 4096
   

3. Reboot the system.

4. Confirm that the values have actually changed by running the following commands.

   • Soft open file limit:

   ulimit -Sn
   

   • Hard open file limit:

   ulimit -Hn
   

5. Launch the Unity Editor.

Additional resources:

• System Requirements