wildcard(*) configuration don't work in /etc/security/limits.conf

[Diego Plentz]

If you change the soft and hardlimit of nofile inside /etc/security/limits.conf for the wildcard *, it wont work for all users. Then you add the same limits, but directly for the user you wanna change(jetty in this case) and it works. Sample:

* soft nofile 2048
* hard nofile 4096

won't work. but this works:

jetty soft nofile 2048
jetty hard nofile 4096

root@dc-app:~# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.10
Release: 8.10

[Gabe Gorelick (gabegorelick)]

limits.conf is handled by the pam_limits PAM module which is included in the base set of modules.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and help to improve Ubuntu.

From what I can see, this is a duplicate of bug #314222, which was fixed in Ubuntu 9.04. Marking as such.

Since Ubuntu 8.10 reaches end-of-life in three months, my recommendation is that you upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 or Ubuntu 9.10 if the behavior of pam_limits in 8.10 is a problem for you.