Re: maximum number of processes on kernel 2.4.x

[Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au>]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2002 02:33, Wayne Tucker wrote:
> > I guess that you have some problem related to ulimit...
>
> [snip]
>
> Is the "default" number of processes allowed by ulimit/setrlimit
> determined in the kernel, or is it being set from somewhere in the
> init scripts?  Are resource limits inherited from the parent process,
> and can the default for daemons be changed somewhere in the init
> process so that they can be effective for daemon processes that start
> on bootup?  The system does not have any users other than admins, so
> for our purposes it would be safe for us to have RLIMIT_NPROC set to
> something higher such as 512.

I think that generally ulimit is not set in init scripts.  However some init 
scripts may end up sourcing /etc/profile (this is not a good idea), and 
people often put ulimit commands in /etc/profile...

The kernel definately doesn't put any significant limits in.

Are you certain that it's a limit on the number of processes?  Or might it be 
some other limit that hits in when you have 256 processes?

Check in /proc/sys/fs and see if the first field in file-nr is near the value 
of file-max.  Also do the same check for inode-max if it exists.

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