limits.conf not being applied.

Question

I have the following lines in /etc/security/limits.conf

*           soft        nofile          32768
*           hard        nofile          65536
root        soft        nofile          32768
root        hard        nofile          65536

The pam_limits.so file is required in each of the following files.

/etc/pam.d/common-session
/etc/pam.d/cron
/etc/pam.d/login
/etc/pam.d/sshd
/etc/pam.d/su
/etc/pam.d/sudo

ulimit -n upon login (and for services that are started upon bootup) shows 1024 still.

What am I missing?

Answer 1

have you checked you don't have other config files in /etc/security/limits.d/?

Have you tried increasing it with ulimit?

$ ulimit -n 4096
$ ulimit -n
4096

And after saving you must log in again. It's not enough to start a shell, it must be a login shell.

Answer 2

For services in init.d you cannot use /etc/security/limits.d inittab is not reading that files and it is based on pam.d which is not used in initialization startup scripts. All init startup scripts source /etc/init.d/functions so for all services you could hack that script and set limits there. I used to hack /etc/sysconfig for particular services when I needed {httpd, some brokenass oracle stuf} e.t.c. Hope this helps.