ulimit error message

[MikeL_4]

I've have a ksh script that starting erroring out with - ulimit: The specified value exceeds the user's allowable limit.

This is on a 10.20 server and the script is doing a find command, along with am ll -R command.

Is there any way to eliminate this error ??

[Jean-Luc Oudart]

I think there was some pb with ulimit & ksh.
Why not use POSIX-sh ?

Regards,
Jean-Luc

[MikeL_4]

I get the same message when using sh...

[Steven E. Protter]

This may be a 10.20 issue.

There may be limits on what a user can do with ulimit on that platform.

You may not want to use a value like unlimited, it confuses things. I know oracle's startup profile scripts are shipped with bad code that misinterprets input data as non-numeric when certain limits are changed to unlimited.


SEP

[MikeL_4]

How do you change that ??

Right now a ulimit -a displays:

[scapp01] # ulimit -a
time(seconds) unlimited
file(blocks) unlimited
data(kbytes) 65536
stack(kbytes) 8192
memory(kbytes) unlimited
coredump(blocks) 4194303
nofiles(descriptors) 1024
[scapp01] #

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

What exactly is the script trying to increase?.

Can you run it with set -x option and see if you get more information?.

For ex., if it is trying to set the data segment size to more than maxdsiz kernel parameter, you would get this error.

-Sri

[Patrick Wallek]

Is this script running from at/cron by chance?

[MikeL_4]

yes, it's running out of cron, if I run it from the command line it runs fine ..

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

From the ITRC knowledge base:

Solve the problem by replacing ulimit $l in
/var/adm/cron/.proto file with these lines:

if [ $l -eq 4194304 ]
then
ulimit unlimited
else
ulimit $l
fi

Please note that "$l" above is the dollar sign ($) followed by the lower case letter 'ell' (not the number one). See proto(4) for its special meaning in this context.

[Patrick Wallek]

OK. Try this then. It is from TKB document A5237772

Edit the /var/adm/cron/.proto file:

Replace the "ulimit $l" with:

if [ $l -eq 4194304 ]
then
ulimit unlimited
else
ulimit $l
fi

Note the the $l is a $(ell - lower case L - NOT the number 1).

[MikeL_4]

Thanks Bill & Patrick, the change to the proto file resolved the problem.