Upping max file descriptors limits under Linux doesn't work?

Hi,

Linux has a great big limitation (as far as I'm concerned) in that
out-of-the-box it only allows 256 open files per process, and (I think?) a
max. of 1024 open files. This is probably due to it's single-user
workstation roots...

Anyway, I've patched a linux kernel here to up that limit (it's been
discussed recently in the kernel mailing-list), and was then trying to
recompile squid to take advantage of the larger numbers. According to the
kernel, and the ulimit command, the new kernel now allows 1024 open files
per process, and 2048 open files. However, when I run Squid's configure
prog, it still comes up claiming that 256 is the limit.

Doing a strace on the conftest program shows lines like:

getrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, {rlim_cur=1024, rlim_max=1024}) = 0
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, {rlim_cur=1024, rlim_max=1024}) = 0

so it looks to me like it should use 1024 - but it doesn't.

Has anyone any ideas what I've done wrong here? I really need to up this
limit - not as much for squid but for sendmail which now runs
mailing-lists with 20,000 people on them, and constantly produces "file
table overrun" errors...

Cheers,
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jason Haar, Unix/Internet Manager
OiT, Oxford. Phone: +44 1865 785051
Received on Mon Jul 01 1996 - 01:42:20 MDT