increase ulimit for # of file descriptors

Question

As normaluser:

$ ulimit -n 4096
-bash: ulimit: open files: cannot modify limit: Operation not permitted

As root it works as desired - but then it won't affect normaluser.

How to get out of this catch 22? I'll need this to be persistent.

Answer 1

You may want to look at /etc/security/limits.conf

Answer 2

To change file descriptor limit as normal user before running any applicaiton.

I use this small utility fdlimit which will increase file descriptor limit using "setrlimit()" system call before executing any program.

I use it like this

$ sudo ./fdlimit <fdlimit> <program_to_run>