setting nproc in /etc/security/limit.conf prevents ssh login

Posted by omry on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by omry
Published on 2010-03-18T06:39:07Z Indexed on 2010/03/18 6:41 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 291

Filed under:

ulimit

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linux

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ssh

I am trying to use /etc/security/limit.conf on Linux (Debian) to limit the number of processes per user.

for starters, I tried to limit my own user processes by adding this to /etc/security/limit.conf:

omry hard nproc 100

this locked my user out of ssh. I could open new processes (verified with su omry), but could not log into ssh with that user : sshd reported this in it's log:

fatal: setreuid 1000: Resource temporarily unavailable

also, I am certain my user is not running anything near 100 processes (actually 6). what can be the reason for this?

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