A daemon started from your bash session keeps hitting a 'too many open files' error. Which command raises the limit on open file descriptors for the current shell and the processes it starts to 4096?
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 110. Security medium
Machine-checked — no person has signed for it. This question was read against the source cited below by an automated pass, which found no contradiction. That is a weaker claim than it sounds: the same kind of process wrote the question, so it can confirm its own mistake.
Treat it as a good draft rather than as settled fact, and read the source below before you rely on it. It is not used in mock exams here — only questions a person has signed for are.
How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Not correct ulimit -u 4096
Wrong. -u sets the maximum number of processes a single user may have running, not the number of file descriptors a process may hold open.
Not correct ulimit -c 4096
Wrong. -c sets the maximum size of a core dump file; in bash the value is in 1024-byte units. `ulimit -c 0` is the common form, used to switch core dumps off.
Not correct ulimit -f 4096
Wrong. -f caps the size of the largest file the shell and its children may write, again in 1024-byte units, and it is the option ulimit assumes when none is given.
Correct ulimit -n 4096
Correct. -n sets the maximum number of open file descriptors. Limits are inherited, so children of this shell get the new value.
Why
ulimit is a shell builtin that manipulates the per-process resource limits the kernel enforces. Each limit has a soft value (-S, the one actually enforced and freely lowerable) and a hard ceiling (-H, which an unprivileged user can only lower, never raise). `ulimit -a` prints them all. Because a ulimit set in a shell dies with that shell, permanent per-user limits belong in /etc/security/limits.conf or a file under /etc/security/limits.d, applied by pam_limits at login.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 110.1
- What it says
- Use ulimit to discover and set resource limits on user processes.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 110 and space the ones you get wrong.
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