Permission denied for root to change inotify max_user_watches, how solve this?

Question

As root in a CentOs 6.4 server I got this error in an application:

Fri May 16 01:45:23 2014 Error: Terminating since out of inotify watches.
Consider increasing /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches

But when I try to run the command as root I got permission denied.

# echo 100000 > /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches
-bash: /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches: Permission denied

Even if I edit the /etc/sysctl.conf I get permission denied:

# echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
# sysctl -p
error: permission denied on key 'fs.inotify.max_user_watches

How can I solve this?

Solution

I found the answer.

This server is a VPS and it is running in a OpenVZ container and I'm not allowed to modify any kernel parameter of that container.

Comments

[BlackCow]

Ok, me too. So how do you fix it?

[kasperd]

The question explicitly mentioned that he go the error message while running as root.

[Mariano Argañaraz]

Updated my answer, since it doesn't matter if you are root, I have experienced this issue.