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incognito2
Asked: 2011-11-01 09:52:25 +0800 CST

how do i set hard and soft file limits for a non-root user at boot?

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I have a xen HVM vps and I'm trying to raise the hard and soft file limits for nobody at boot time. I'm using Ubuntu 10.04.3 and inside /etc/security/limits.conf I have:

nobody       soft    nofile   10000
nobody       hard    nofile  30000

But when I check the file limits are still the default 1024: 

su nobody -c 'ulimit -Hn'
1024
su nobody -c 'ulimit -Sn'
1024

What is the right way of raising the file limits for Ubuntu?

linux linux-kernel limits

1 Answers

  1. /etc/security/limits.conf file is processed by the pam_limits PAM module and is used to assign resource limits for a user session. These will be applied only when PAM and the pam_limits module is used during the session setup.

    In your system the su utility may be not configured to use the pam_limits module (see the /etc/pam.d/su.conf file) or uses it only when creating a new login session (called with a -, -l or --login option).

    Try using

    su - nobody -c 'ulimit -Hn'

    or adding

    session     required    pam_limits.so

    To /etc/pam.d/su or/and /etc/pam.d/su-l.

    It may also be the case, that your su utility is not compiled with PAM support at all. In such case it will never use the limits.conf file.

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