ulimit nofiles

Hi,

We have an AIX system on oslevel 5.2 and we have the current limits set for the user "XXX"

time(seconds)        unlimited
file(blocks)         unlimited
data(kbytes)         1024000
stack(kbytes)        32768
memory(kbytes)       unlimited
coredump(blocks)     2097151
nofiles(descriptors) 2000

When I run the command lsof to find out what are all of the open files for this user "XXX', I get a value that is greater than 2000.

My question is nofiles(descriptors) value of 2000 is that for all processes for user "XXX" or is per process for user "XXX".

Can someone please advise when possible.
Thanks in advance.

Jerardfjay

Per Process.

Definitely per process - I had to answer the same question myself few months ago.

The reason is that ulimit(), by definition, works only on the current process.
Plus, it would be really fun to have to implement it working on all existing processes for a user. To do that /etc/profile or the user's profile is the place to enforce limits.

on AIX individual limits can be set in /etc/security/limits. It is still per process but can be controlled at the system level without customizing the profile(s). check the chuser or chsec man page.