Hi,

I'm having a bit of a problem setting number open files limit - setting 'ulimit -n 65535' works, which tells me the kernel supports it, but it does not survive a reboot. When I put it in limits.conf it does not seem to have any effect

limits.conf:

* soft nofile 65535
* hard nofile 65535

It always worked on my other servers, but not on linodes for some reason...

Thanks!
Art

What is the result of

$ ulimit -a

Are you wanting to set a per process limit (ulimit -n), or set a limit allowed by the kernel (/proc/sys/fs/file-max)?

If you are wanting to set the maximum open file descriptors allowed by the kernel, then you need to do it in /proc/sys/fs/file-max. For example:

$ echo "65535" > /proc/sys/fs/file-max

You can check this the open and allowed file descriptors:

$ cat /proc/sys/fs/file-nr

the ulimit -a outputs this:

core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 20
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 16382
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 64
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 1024
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) unlimited
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks                      (-x) unlimited

the /proc/sys/fs/file-max contains some insanely large number...

I'm trying to set 'ulimit -n'

Ok. I'm not sure what to tell you... setting the /etc/security/limits.conf persists after a reboot on my servers. What version (OS/kernel) are you using?

$ cat /etc/security/limits.conf
*               soft    nofile          65535
*               hard    nofile          65535

$ ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 0
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 8192
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 32
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 65535
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) 8192
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks                      (-x) unlimited

Ubuntu 10.4 64
(Latest 2.6 Paravirt (2.6.34-x86_64-linode13)

Have you considered setting placing "ulimit -n 65535" inside /etc/bashrc?

Also, after modifying your /etc/security/limits.conf, did you issue a reboot? A reboot is required for that to have any effect.

yes, i did reboot and it says 1024...

wouldn't bashrc only have effect upon interactive login?

Thanks!
Art

Ok, my bad. Ubuntu does not apply * wildcards to root, it must be explicit:

root soft nofile 65535
root hard nofile 65535

Yes, it would only have an effect after an interactive login.

I'm glad you got it worked out!