[tlug] ulimit

[simon colston <simon@example.com>]

I'm using a Redhat 9 machine and trying to increase the number of open 
files available to a particular user.

The default value is 1024:
$ ulimit -n
1024

I added the following lines to /etc/security/limits.conf to increase 
this for simon.

*	hard	nofile	8192
simon	soft	nofile	8192

As root,
# ulimit -n
1024
# su - simon
$ ulimit -n
8192

which seems OK but then I tried,
$ ulimit -n 1024
$ ulimit -n
1024
$ ulimit -n 8192
-bash: ulimit: open files: cannot modify limit: permission denied

I would expect to be able to reset the limit back to the hard limit set 
in my limits.conf.

Also if I log in as simon, (without su-ing to simon from root) I get,
$ ulimit -n
1024

and not the 8192 I would expect.

Googling gives me plenty of pages saying that I just need to set the 
limits in /etc/security/limits.conf and everything should be OK but I 
can't find anything about the problem I've described.

Cheers,

Simon

-- 
simon colston