Ulimit settings not being applied with SSH logins
On a RHEL5 server ulimit setting was not applied when I logged in using SSH. No matter what I did the setting remained the same. Doing a “su – ” to a user, however, worked like a treat. Strange! I did a bit of googling and found the following answer to my problem:
1. In /etc/pam.d/sshd add the line
session required pam_limits.so
2. In /etc/pam.d/login add the line
session required pam_limits.so
3. In /etc/ssh/sshd_config add
UsePAM yes
(this might already be in place in your config file – I’m not using a stock sshd_config)
4. reload SSH
/etc/init.d/sshd restart
Now change something in /etc/security/limits.conf
user1 soft nofile 2048 user1 hard nofile 4096
Log in as user1 – and voila!
ulimit -n should now show 2048 and ulimit -nH 4096