Bitbucket Server cannot create to new connections due to "No buffer space available (maximum connections reached?)"

Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian apps on the Data Center platform.

Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

Problem

Bitbucket Server cannot open new sockets.

The following appears in the atlassian-bitbucket.log:

ERROR [Caesium-1-4] c.a.scheduler.core.JobLauncher Scheduled job with ID '<job id>' failed java.lang.IllegalStateException: org.apache.http.nio.reactor.IOReactorException: Failure opening selector Caused by: org.apache.http.nio.reactor.IOReactorException: Failure opening selector Caused by: java.io.IOException: Unable to establish loopback connection Caused by: java.net.SocketException: No buffer space available (maximum connections reached?): bind

Cause

Bitbucket Server can't create any new sockets when it's trying to talk to other services (e.g. database or external user directory). This could be caused by another application on the same server as Bitbucket Server and exhausting the available sockets.

The following command can be used to report the sockets in use:

netstat -n

Resolution

There are various options to resolve this:

  • identify what's using the sockets and reduce the numbers

  • increase the number of available sockets

Updated on April 21, 2026

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