Comment 7 for bug 406486

LAZA,
I forgot to say some stuff, sorry.
You have to run that command like

$ sudo -s
$ echo "* - nofile 1536" >> /etc/security/limits.conf
$ exit

This way, you have root access to the file, not just the 'echo' command (when I tried to do it the first time, I also had the problem you had). After that, restart the machine.
Also, it doesn't matter that limits.conf is wholy commented out. That just means the system is working on defaults.

BTW: Why did you chose to set the limit on open files to 1536?

Regards,

Felipe.