linux limits.conf not working?

linux core limits

daehee · Jun 12, 2014 · Viewed 13.8k times · Source

I configured /etc/security/limits.conf like this.

user1               soft    core            0
user1               hard    core            0

Then, I rebooted the system and logged in as root then I did this.

su user1
ulimit -c unlimited

then I executed a buggy application to generate core file. since I set the core limit to zero from limits.conf, I expected the core will not be generated but, that was not the result, the core was normally generated. what's wrong??

some advice would be appreciated.

Answer

limits.conf is read by pam_limits.so, so you need to check that this module is enabled in /etc/pam.d/su. On my system, this was commented out by default:

# Sets up user limits, please uncomment and read /etc/security/limits.conf
# to enable this functionality.
# (Replaces the use of /etc/limits in old login)
# session    required   pam_limits.so

Once uncommented, the module will start working immediately. If you still have problems, check your auth log (maybe /var/log/auth.log), which is where limits-related errors will be written.

linux limits.conf not working?

Answer

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