Reindexing fails: IndexException: Too many open files

From a jira-user post:

>When I try to reindex our issue database, I am getting this error:
>
>Exception reindexing: com.atlassian.jira.issue.index.IndexException:
>Error closing writer: java.io.FileNotFoundException:
>C:\test\jira\indexes\issues_32.fnm (Too many open files):
>
>I wrote a small java program to find out how many files can be open before
>this error is thrown, and the number is 2036. Trying to open #2037 causes
>the exception.
>
>Does anyone know how to get around this limit in Windows XP? Is there a
>setting somewhere?
>
>Are there some properties or settings somewhere in Jira for Lucene that I
>can play around with to try to get the indexing to succeed?
>
>(I'm using jira 2.5.1, tomcat 4.1, remote database)

To which Hani replies:

If you have source, one way of fixing this is by ensuring that you're
using the latest lucene RC and enabling compound files by calling
writer.setUseCompoundFile(true); whenever jira creates a lucene writer.
This drastically reduces the number of files it opens and so avoids the
issue below. I'd suggest the jira guys try to make this change in the
next release (assuming of course it passes the rigorous QA procedures )