How to change ulimit values permanently for a user in Centos

Hi,

ulimit is the parameter which defines the limits a process can use on a linux system.  It will provide control over the resources a user or a process in a shell can use.  You can list the current setting of ulimit values by login as your user and type the following commands

# ulimit -Hn
# ulimit -Sn

Default values should be 4096 and 1024 respectively.
 

So it will also determine the number of open files a user can open or edit. For increasing the ulimit, you need to change those paramentes in a configuration file called

/etc/security/limits.conf

If I need to change the ulimit value for my user on  a linux system. Then you should login to machine as root.

Open the above file in editor and then add the following content to it.

syam        soft nofile 9000
syam        hard nofile 65000


Now you should see the changes to the ulimit value for a user when you switch user from the root. But still the limit won't get reflected when user login as ssh with the password. We need to add the following steps to get the changes reflected for the user upon ssh login as user .

1. In /etc/pam.d/sshd added the line

session required pam_limits.so

2. In /etc/pam.d/login added the line

session required pam_limits.so

3. In /etc/ssh/sshd_config added

UsePAM yes

Now restart the sshd service

4. /etc/init.d/sshd restart

Now the ulimit values will be changed permenantly and you can see the values once you ssh into the machine as user.


ulimit -Hn
65000

ulimit -Sn

9000

Regards
Syamkumar.M