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Questions tagged [ulimit]

ulimit is a Unix-like command line utility that provides control over the resources available to the shell and to processes started by it.

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5 answers
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Practical maximum open file descriptors (ulimit -n) for a high volume system

We recently began load testing our application and noticed that it ran out of file descriptors after about 24 hours. We are running RHEL 5 on a Dell 1955: CPU: 2 x Dual Core 2.66GHz 4MB 5150 / ...
Kevin's user avatar
  • 963
61 votes
3 answers
124k views

Soft limit vs Hard limit?

Can anyone explain in layman's terms what the difference between soft and hard limit is? Should I set my soft and hard limit to be the same? Or should soft be significantly lower? Does the system ...
kidcapital's user avatar
44 votes
9 answers
164k views

where are the default ulimit values set? (linux, centos)

I have two CentOS 5 servers with nearly identical specs. When I login and do ulimit -u, on one machine I get unlimited, and on the other I get 77824. When I run a cron like: * * * * * ulimit -u &...
nomercysir's user avatar
42 votes
2 answers
58k views

How do ulimit -n and /proc/sys/fs/file-max differ?

I notice that on a new CentOS image that I just booted up off of EC2 that the ulimit default is 1024 open files, but /proc/sys/fs/file-max is set at 761,408 and I'm wondering how these two limits work ...
bantic's user avatar
  • 1,589
39 votes
5 answers
70k views

Set max file limit on a running process

I have a long running process that is eventually going to hit the max open file limit. I know how to change that after it fails, but is there a way to change that for the running process, from the ...
kāgii's user avatar
  • 491
28 votes
7 answers
33k views

Where are the default ulimits specified on OS X (10.5)?

The default nofile limit for OS X user accounts seems to be about 256 file descriptors these days. I'm trying to test some software that needs a lot more connections than that open at once. On a ...
archaelus's user avatar
  • 383
25 votes
3 answers
102k views

How to set ulimit value permanently?

On Debian Wheezy, ulimit -a gives: open files (-n) 1024 I add this to /etc/security/limits.conf * hard nofile 64000 then reboot. And ulimit -a ...
Icu's user avatar
  • 1,435
24 votes
5 answers
63k views

ulimit -n not changing - values limits.conf has no effect

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'...
Abbas Gadhia's user avatar
23 votes
3 answers
57k views

Too many open files with nginx, can't seem to raise limit

The server is Ubuntu 13.04 (GNU/Linux 3.9.3-x86_64-linode33 x86_64). nginx is nginx/1.2.6. I've been working on this for an several hours now, so here's what I'm getting and here's what I've done. ...
Geuis's user avatar
  • 647
19 votes
2 answers
88k views

Increasing ulimit on CentOS

We have a CentOS box that I'm trying to increase the max number of files that a user can have open. Currently when I run ulimit -Sn I get 1024 and ulimit -Hn gives 4096. I need that number up around ...
nwalke's user avatar
  • 643
19 votes
2 answers
76k views

/etc/security/limits.conf soft nproc limit appears to be ignored

My MongoDB database was running into problems under load, with the following errors spamming the logs: [initandlisten] pthread_create failed: errno:11 Resource temporarily unavailable [initandlisten] ...
John M's user avatar
  • 333
18 votes
2 answers
54k views

nginx uLimit 'worker_connections exceed open file resource limit: 1024'

I keep getting this error in nginx/error.log and its driving me nuts: 8096 worker_connections exceed open file resource limit: 1024 I've tried everything I can think of and cant figure out what is ...
Neel's user avatar
  • 1,481
18 votes
1 answer
14k views

Ubuntu 16.04 Server MySql open_file_limit won't go higher than 65536

I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 Server on XenServer and I'm running into an issue with MySql's open file limit. Here's what I've done so far: sudo nano /etc/security/limits.conf (reference) * soft nofile ...
J Pierret's user avatar
  • 181
18 votes
2 answers
17k views

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

I am trying to raise the open file descriptor maximum for all users on an ubuntu machine. I've added the following lines to /etc/security/limits.conf: * soft nofile 100000 ...
bantic's user avatar
  • 1,589
18 votes
1 answer
11k views

What's the difference between `lsof -p <pid> | wc -l` and `ls /proc/<pid>/fd | wc -l`?

Background: I'm playing around with monitoring the ulimit for running processes for a particular user. (I had occasionally seen processes that were getting started with an incorrect limit.) I asked a ...
Jared's user avatar
  • 283
18 votes
9 answers
45k views

How to set ulimits for a service starting at boot?

I need, for mysql to use large-pages, to set a ulimit - I've done this in limits.conf. However, limits.conf (pam_limits.so), doesn't get read in for init, only for "real" shells. I solved this before ...
jayofdoom's user avatar
  • 191
17 votes
4 answers
20k views

How can lsof report a higher number of open files than what ulimit says should be allowed?

How can lsof report more open files than what ulimit says is the limit? prod_web3(i-ca0b05aa):~$ sudo lsof | wc -l 4399 prod_web3(i-ca0b05aa):~$ ulimit -n 1024
Adam Nelson's user avatar
  • 1,717
16 votes
3 answers
81k views

How can I permanently set ulimit -n 8192 in Centos 7?

I would like to permanently set the open file limit for all users in Centos 7, but there seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there on the googles.
jestro's user avatar
  • 271
16 votes
3 answers
26k views

Ulimit file descriptor limits not being applied for particular process

I recently checked one of our redis processes to what ulimits where applied using: cat /proc/<redis-pid>/limits And was suprised to learn that is was at the low default value: Limit ...
UpTheCreek's user avatar
  • 1,638
15 votes
4 answers
66k views

Cannot switch, ssh to specific user: su: cannot set user id: Resource temporarily unavailable?

/var/log/secure: su: pam_keyinit(su-l:session): Unable to change UID to 500 temporarily su: pam_keyinit(su-l:session): Unable to change UID to 500 temporarily su: pam_unix(su-l:session): session ...
quanta's user avatar
  • 52k
15 votes
4 answers
31k views

ulimit for windows

Are there true ulimit for windows? I'm finding ways/programs how to prevent one program eating 100% cpu. Thanks.
user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
35k views

What is the impact of increasing "nofile" limits in /etc/security/limits.conf?

I've found a number of articles describing how to increase the limits for the number of open files through /etc/security/limits.conf, but I don't understand the impact of doing so. Many times I see ...
Adam's user avatar
  • 286
13 votes
2 answers
23k views

understanding max file descriptors for linux and nginx, and best value for worker_rlimit_nofile

I got the seemingly-common "too many file descriptors" error on nginx. After much searching, the solution is clearly to increase the number of file descriptors available to nginx. But there isn't ...
John Bachir's user avatar
  • 2,374
12 votes
1 answer
2k views

Difference between ulimit, launchctl, sysctl?

When managing the limits of the operating system (specifically OSX), what is the difference and overlap between the functionality and history of these three tools: ulimit launchctl, launchd sysctl I ...
Eric's user avatar
  • 221
11 votes
6 answers
21k views

Increase file ulimit for the asterisk daemon

How do i increase the file limit for the asterisk daemon on my ubuntu computer? When I login as root and use the ulimit, it says unlimited already. I can't login as asterisk because that user doesn'...
learningtech's user avatar
  • 7,549
10 votes
5 answers
30k views

How to set ulimits for mongod?

How do I set ulimits for the mongod process/user on CentOS? I've read the official documentation but it doesn't provide OS-specific instructions. I need to set ulimit -u 64000 and need this to ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 604
10 votes
2 answers
34k views

How do ulimit settings impact Linux?

Lately, I had a EAGAIN error with some async code that made me take a closer look at ulimit settings. While I clearly understand certain limits, such as nofile, others are still quite confused to me. ...
Buzut's user avatar
  • 835
9 votes
2 answers
6k views

What are the ramifications of increasing the maximum # of open file descriptors

Ubuntu seems to have a default limit of 1024 open file descriptors. Nginx was complaining during some load testing I was doing that the maximum number has been reached and the server basically was ...
codecompleting's user avatar
9 votes
4 answers
28k views

Why does redis report limit of 1024 files even after update to limits.conf?

I see this error at the top of my redis.log file: Current maximum open files is 1024. maxclients has been reduced to 4064 to compensate for low ulimit. I have followed these steps to the letter (...
esilver's user avatar
  • 335
9 votes
1 answer
14k views

Changing open-files-limit in mysql 5.5

I'm having an issue with mysql 5.5 running on Ubuntu 12.04 with the open-files-limit parameter. I recently noticed some problems due to the 1024 limit, and actually the main system limit was set to ...
davidv's user avatar
  • 91
9 votes
3 answers
7k views

proc's limit and ulimit -f don't match

I have an issue where a process has a different max file size than the ulimit for a user. The log file for this process is basically not growing past 524288 proc: less /proc/20238/limits Limit ...
Dakota Brown's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
18k views

determine ulimit for root user

we believe we have increased the max open file descriptors for the root user. This was done by adding this line to /etc/security/limits.conf: * - nofile 2048 We think we've ...
andersonbd1's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
17k views

samba stuck at maximum of 1024 open files

I'm running a Ubuntu 10.04 (lucid) samba fileserver. I have a Windows 7 client which opens a large number of files while doing a copy of thousands of tiny files at once. It receives the error "Too ...
cecilkorik's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
36k views

How to configure linux file descriptor limit with fs.file-max and ulimit

Server applications running on linux often require large quantities of open file handlers, for ex. HBase ulimit, Hadoop epoll limit This wiki entry should serve as documentary for Linux file limits ...
8 votes
1 answer
4k views

limits.conf setting doesn't 'stick'

Trying to get the equivalent of ulimit -n 20000 on a high load web server, however the /etc/security/limits.conf on ubuntu hardy doesn't seem to stick. here is what I set in the config file. root ...
Brandon Helwig's user avatar
7 votes
5 answers
82k views

How to set ulimits in Solaris 10

I normally use pam_limits.so and /etc/security/limits.conf to set ulimits on file size, CPU time, etc. for the regular users logging in to my server running Ubuntu. What is the best way of doing ...
user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
16k views

It should be set to 65000 to avoid operational disruption

I'm following Taking Solr to Production | Apache Solr Reference Guide 8.5, however unable to overcome warning while restarting solr service: # service solr restart *** [WARN] *** Your open file limit ...
alexus's user avatar
  • 13.5k
7 votes
1 answer
27k views

centos/redhat: change open files ulimit without reboot?

The hard limit of the number of open files is set to 1024 on my machine. I changed /etc/security/limits.conf and added 'idror hard nofile 65000'. In my shell I tried ulimit -n 65000. I get 'ulimit: ...
IttayD's user avatar
  • 1,127
7 votes
5 answers
18k views

limits.conf not being applied.

I have the following lines in /etc/security/limits.conf * soft nofile 32768 * hard nofile 65536 root soft nofile 32768 root ...
diolemo's user avatar
  • 283
7 votes
1 answer
4k views

Are ulimits inherited by the shell, by the user, or a combination?

When a process spawns a subshell, how is the ulimit inherited? Is it by user, by shell, or a combination? Specifically, this was found in the context of HP Server Automation jobs failing on some ...
warren's user avatar
  • 18.9k
6 votes
2 answers
24k views

Getting Too many Open files error for Postgres

In Ubuntu 14.04 server on a JAVA application we are getting Too many Open files error for Postgres (Using Postgresql 9.5). We set the following in /etc/security/limits.conf * soft nofile 16384 * ...
Geo's user avatar
  • 575
6 votes
2 answers
16k views

Understanding ulimit -u

I'd like to understand what's going on here. linvx$ ( ulimit -u 123; /bin/echo nst ) nst linvx$ ( ulimit -u 122; /bin/echo nst ) -bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable Terminated linvx$ ( ...
tripleee's user avatar
  • 1,514
6 votes
3 answers
17k views

can't log in when nofile is set to unlimited in /etc/security/limits.conf

I set the following values (-1 will be resolved to unlimited, I suppose) in /etc/security/limits.conf (CentOS 6.2) root nofile soft -1 root nofile hard -1 and I can't log in with root user now. ...
manuzhang's user avatar
  • 167
6 votes
1 answer
17k views

How to set systemwide ulimit on ubuntu

I want to set systemwide ulimit on ubuntu (all processes, all users). How can I set it? thanks JP
user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
8k views

"open files" ulimit: controlling via limits.conf

I'm banging my head on this, and I can't understand why it's not working. I'm hoping that someone can shed light on this, or failing that, give me some suggestions for avenues of investigation. I've ...
MadHatter's user avatar
  • 80.8k
6 votes
3 answers
10k views

Squid running out of file descriptors on Ubuntu

I am running Squid 2.7 on Ubuntu 10.04 64bits. I had the problem of Squid running out of file descriptors, with the following error showing in /var/log/squid/cache.log: WARNING! Your cache is ...
UrkoM's user avatar
  • 393
6 votes
2 answers
2k views

How to change stack depth limits in /etc/security/limits.d/ and have the changes apply to services at boot

My system Series of Ubuntu 14.04.5 (x86_64) Servers, kept updated My application required I increase stack depth for postgres I created a file in /etc/security/limits.d/myapplication.conf The ...
James T Snell's user avatar
5 votes
4 answers
10k views

How to increase max FD limit for a daemon process running under a headless user?

To increase the FD limit for a daemon process running under a headless user on a Ubuntu Linux machine we did following changes in /etc/security/limits.conf soft nofile 10000 hard nofile 10000 We ...
Ameliorator's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
5k views

Using ulimit to limit the amount of memory a script can use

I have an ubuntu system and I have a script that runs regularly. I need to limit the maximum amount of memory that this script can use. AFAIK ulimit is the command to do this, however I can't get it ...
Amandasaurus's user avatar
  • 32.5k
5 votes
1 answer
7k views

Is this the correct way to permanently set the ulimit in Debian?

Manually I can set via ulimit -n 20000 the file descriptor limit and it works fine. To have this limit for every user also after a restart of the machine, can I add * soft nofile ...
H6_'s user avatar
  • 277