1 pam_limits — PAM module to limit resources
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7 The pam_limits PAM module sets limits on the system resources that can be
8 obtained in a user-session. Users of uid=0 are affected by this limits, too.
10 By default limits are taken from the /etc/security/limits.conf config file.
11 Then individual *.conf files from the /etc/security/limits.d/ directory are
12 read. The files are parsed one after another in the order of "C" locale. The
13 effect of the individual files is the same as if all the files were
14 concatenated together in the order of parsing. If a config file is explicitly
15 specified with a module option then the files in the above directory are not
18 The module must not be called by a multithreaded application.
20 If Linux PAM is compiled with audit support the module will report when it
21 denies access based on limit of maximum number of concurrent login sessions.
25 conf=/path/to/limits.conf
27 Indicate an alternative limits.conf style configuration file to override
32 Print debug information.
36 Set the limits for which no value is specified in the configuration file to
37 the one from the process with the PID 1.
41 Some broken applications actually allocate a utmp entry for the user before
42 the user is admitted to the system. If some of the services you are
43 configuring PAM for do this, you can selectively use this module argument
44 to compensate for this behavior and at the same time maintain system-wide
45 consistency with a single limits.conf file.
49 Do not report exceeded maximum logins count to the audit subsystem.
53 These are some example lines which might be specified in /etc/security/
58 @student hard nproc 20
59 @faculty soft nproc 20
60 @faculty hard nproc 50
62 @student - maxlogins 4