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I am trying to raise the open file descriptor maximum for all users on an ubuntu machine.

This question is somewhat of a follow up to this question.

open file descriptor limits.conf setting isn't read by ulimit even when pam_limits.so is required

except that i've added the required "root" entries in limits.conf

Here are the entries

*               soft    nofile           100000
*               hard    nofile           100000
root            soft    nofile           100000
root            hard    nofile           100000

Lines related to pam_limits.so have been un-commented in all relevant files in /etc/pam.d/ and fs.file-max has been set correctly in /etc/sysctl.conf

However, I still see

abc@machine-2:/etc/pam.d$ ulimit -n
1024

after reboot.

What could be the problem?

My default shell is /bin/sh and i can't use chsh to change my default shell since the my user on the machine is authenticated via some distributed authentication scheme.

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4
  • strace -o loglimit su - abc and after that egrep "(limit|open)" loglimit, maybe your pam configuration are wrong
    – c4f4t0r
    Jan 23, 2014 at 11:02
  • @c4f4t0r, the - option to su only causes a new login when it's the last argument. I only know this because I was just reading that man page. Also, as a detail, a regular user cannot strace an suid root binary.
    – etherfish
    Jan 23, 2014 at 11:08
  • as root you need to use the command strace -o loglimit su - abc
    – c4f4t0r
    Jan 23, 2014 at 11:14
  • sorry for spam but i have this kind of issue unix.stackexchange.com/questions/200310/…
    – vladeli
    May 5, 2015 at 13:01

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
12

I had a similar problem, but with SSH logins only. Local logins (via console) respected the /etc/security/limits.conf.

As it turned out, when you set:

UsePrivilegeSeparation yes

in /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, then sshd forks an unprivileged child to set up the account's env. Because this child is unprivileged, then pam_limits.so setting upper limits had no effect.

As soon as I set

UsePrivilegeSeparation no

in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and bounced the SSH service, then the limits.conf file were respected with SSH logins.

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  • 4
    In my case I changed sshd-config to UsePAM yes. (+1 for pointing me to sshd-config)
    – Randall Whitman
    Oct 2, 2017 at 17:57
6

On Redhat server logged as root

/etc/security/limits.conf

user01  -       nofile  2048

strace command logged as root

strace -o loglimit su - user01

with other shell open loglimit

grep "limit" loglimit
open("/lib64/security/pam_limits.so", O_RDONLY) = 6
 ..........
 ..........
 open("/etc/security/limits.conf", O_RDONLY) = 3
 read(3, "# /etc/security/limits.conf\n#\n#E"..., 4096) = 1823
 open("/etc/security/limits.d", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_DIRECTORY) = 3
 setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, {rlim_cur=2*1024, rlim_max=2*1024}) = 0

In this way I know that, pam_limits was loaded and limits.conf was readed, if your pam_limits was loaded but you still see other values using ulimit -n, check your shell profile as @etherfish told

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  • 2
    I got the error: prlimit64(0, RLIMIT_NOFILE, {rlim_cur=10000000, rlim_max=10000000}, NULL) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted). This was because I had set the limit too high. Fixed by reducing the limit.
    – Prunus Persica
    Aug 24, 2020 at 23:01
4

I suspect the ulimit is being applied by a /etc/profile or a ~/.bashrc. The fact that your system has a complicated pam, I would confirm that something isn't going awry.

I'd also confirm that there isn't an errant file in /etc/security/limits.d/ being parsed as mentioned in pam_limits(8).

I'd add debug parameter to the session required pam_limits.conf line and then watch /var/log/auth.log as you log in.

If your soft limit is 1024, whats your hard limit?

su should get you a fresh, new log in with su using the -l argument.

su -l -s /bin/bash

Good Luck.

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1
  • my hard limit is 4096 i.e ulimit -Hn
    – Abbas Gadhia
    Jan 23, 2014 at 11:23
4

I was with a issue like this, here what I did.

The strace command will print all interactions the process are doing with external libraries, so with it we can see if our config is loaded or not.

So, i do, like suggested above:

root:/etc/pam.d$ strace -o ~/loglimit su - glaudiston
glaudiston:~$ exit
logout
root:/etc/pam.d$ cat ~/loglimit | grep limits.conf

In my issue, the strace log (strace -o log su - username) does not have any instance of limits text, so the file limits.conf was NOT loaded.

First I make sure the pam_limits.so looks for /etc/security/limits.conf

root:/etc/pam.d$ strings /lib/security/pam_limits.so | grep limits.conf
/etc/security/limits.conf

So, I make sure that the module pam_limits.so is loaded in auth operation in files located at /etc/pam.d ... for example, in /etc/pam.d/su, I added:

session   required    pam_limits.so

Now, I can make a "su" to my user and the limits will be loaded. You can redo the strace step to make it sure.

My linux is a LFS, so is my fault the absense of pam_limits.so in /etc/pam.d files. In other distros I don't think to be this exact issue.

But hope this helps.

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1

In my case (Centos 6.10) strace showed that after limit was set from /etc/security/limits.conf later on in the login process it was reset from /etc/security/limits.d/90-nproc.conf for all non-root users:

*          soft    nproc     1024
root       soft    nproc     unlimited
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