Not able to increase ulimit -Hn, only shows up for a sudo su session

Question

So I am trying to change my hard limit for file descriptors on Ubuntu18.04 laptop. I have tried everything but the changes have still not taken effect.

I need to run a go program which keeps throwing this error. too many open files

So I made some changes to my /etc/security/limits.conf file according to this blog post https://medium.com/@muhammadtriwibowo/set-permanently-ulimit-n-open-files-in-ubuntu-4d61064429a

These are the contents of limits.conf

* soft     nproc          65535    
* hard     nproc          65535   
* soft     nofile         65535   
* hard     nofile         65535
root soft     nproc          65535    
root hard     nproc          65535   
root soft     nofile         65535   
root hard     nofile         65535

And I also changed /etc/pam.d/common-session to add the line session required pam_limits.so

The I restarted my terminal and ulimit -Hn still showed 4096 but when I did sudo su and ran the same command it gave me 65535

But since I am not running my go program inside of the su session it still doesn't work out for me, I need to change my actual hard limit to a higher value for all the users not just the super user

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You're very close.

Add the user name who needs the values. You just set limits for root, now set it for the user you need.

You can add users groups etc. From Redhat site:

        # vi /etc/security/limits.conf
    #<domain>        <type>  <item>  <value>

    *               -       core             <value>
    *               -       data             <value>
    *               -       priority         <value>
    *               -       fsize            <value>
    *               soft    sigpending       <value> eg:57344
    *               hard    sigpending       <value> eg:57444
    *               -       memlock          <value>
    *               -       nofile           <value> eg:1024
    *               -       msgqueue         <value> eg:819200
    *               -       locks            <value>
    *               soft    core             <value>
    *               hard    nofile           <value>
    @<group>        hard    nproc            <value>
    <user>          soft    nproc            <value>
    %<group>        hard    nproc            <value>
    <user>          hard    nproc            <value>
    @<group>        -       maxlogins        <value>
    <user>          hard    cpu              <value>
    <user>          soft    cpu              <value>
    <user>          hard    locks            <value>

<domain> can be:

a user name
a group name, with @group syntax
the wildcard *, for default entry
the wildcard %, can be also used with %group syntax, for maxlogin limit

Set up the users in limits.conf, log off and back on and see if that helps.

joe soft     nproc          65535    
joe hard     nproc          65535   
joe soft     nofile         65535   
joe hard     nofile         65535