>>>>>>>>>>>
There *is* a user limit as well (in the sense of "non-system-wide"):
it's one of the inherited setrlimit() resource limits. To see a
shell's current resource limits (soft and hard limits respectively)
you can use "ulimit -Sa" and "ulimit -Ha" (for bash-flavoured shells)
or "limit" and "limit -h" (for tcsh-flavoured shells).
Interactive login shells will typically have user limits set lower than
the system-wide maximum: e.g. at 1024. System administrators may be
able to configure this on a per-subsystem basis (e.g. those such as
sshd which use pam_limits can edit /etc/security/limits.conf).
<<<<<<<<<<<<
I am old enough to remember when the default number of fd's
available to a process was 20- so there was some entertaining
jiggery-pokery needed to fake a larger number of open files
for Thoroughbred BASIC.
While this was tunable (on some systems) there was usually a
terrible price to be paid and could not be depended upon for
a "portable" environment, so, at the time, we worked with
what was the "default".
I recall when UUCP (for Xenix) itself had problems because it
leaked fd's (open but never closed).
This moment of history sponsores by a desire to remind you all
of how good you have it... ...nowadays.
--------------------
John R. Campbell, Speaker to Machines (GNUrd) {813-356|697}-5322
"Will Work for CLAIM Codes"
IBM Certified: IBM AIX 4.3 System Administration, System Support
