Cpanel: ulimit -n keeps resetting to default

Question

I want to change the open files setting for Apache on a cPanel server. If I set the new value in /etc/init.d/httpd everything works fine, until I recompile with EasyApache, then it gets reset back to the old value (which is no higher than 16384 and I need higher). Where can I up the default value?

I cannot find it anywhere.

Answer 1

I myself came up with:

attr +i /etc/init.d/httpd

That worked, but nicer is the answer cPanel gave finally:

• See http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/EasyApache3/EasyApacheHooks
• Create /etc/init.d/httpd.myversion and make it how you want.
• Then, edit /scripts/posteasyapache
• Then in there put a cp /etc/init.d/httpd.myversion /etc/init.d/httpd

I couldn't find that in Google at all, but there you go, hopefully now people can find it.

Answer 2

I'll hazard a guess here. Probably when you are recompiling, your init.d/httpd is getting overwritten. When you recompile, all your processes are getting killed off, so the ulimit no longer applies to them. Ulimit only applies to the shell it is running in. So one solution to this would be to set the default value for the entire shell to be higher. You could do this by just going in to /etc/profile and setting it there. Just be aware that this will have system wide consequences. The other thing you could do would be to write a shell script that just appended the ulimit to your init.d/httpd file if it wasn't there, and have it run as part of the compile process.