pam_limits(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | MODULE TYPES PROVIDED | RETURN VALUES | FILES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | AUTHORS | COLOPHON

PAM_LIMITS(8)               Linux-PAM Manual               PAM_LIMITS(8)

NAME         top

       pam_limits - PAM module to limit resources

SYNOPSIS         top


       pam_limits.so [conf=/path/to/limits.conf] [debug] [set_all]
                     [utmp_early] [noaudit]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The pam_limits PAM module sets limits on the system resources
       that can be obtained in a user-session. Users of uid=0 are
       affected by this limits, too.

       By default limits are taken from the /etc/security/limits.conf
       config file. Then individual *.conf files from the
       /etc/security/limits.d/ directory are read. The files are parsed
       one after another in the order of "C" locale. The effect of the
       individual files is the same as if all the files were
       concatenated together in the order of parsing. If a config file
       is explicitly specified with a module option then the files in
       the above directory are not parsed.

       The module must not be called by a multithreaded application.

       If Linux PAM is compiled with audit support the module will
       report when it denies access based on limit of maximum number of
       concurrent login sessions.

OPTIONS         top

       conf=/path/to/limits.conf
           Indicate an alternative limits.conf style configuration file
           to override the default.

       debug
           Print debug information.

       set_all
           Set the limits for which no value is specified in the
           configuration file to the one from the process with the PID
           1. Please note that if the init process is systemd these
           limits will not be the kernel default limits and this option
           should not be used.

       utmp_early
           Some broken applications actually allocate a utmp entry for
           the user before the user is admitted to the system. If some
           of the services you are configuring PAM for do this, you can
           selectively use this module argument to compensate for this
           behavior and at the same time maintain system-wide
           consistency with a single limits.conf file.

       noaudit
           Do not report exceeded maximum logins count to the audit
           subsystem.

MODULE TYPES PROVIDED         top

       Only the session module type is provided.

RETURN VALUES         top

       PAM_ABORT
           Cannot get current limits.

       PAM_IGNORE
           No limits found for this user.

       PAM_PERM_DENIED
           New limits could not be set.

       PAM_SERVICE_ERR
           Cannot read config file.

       PAM_SESSION_ERR
           Error recovering account name.

       PAM_SUCCESS
           Limits were changed.

       PAM_USER_UNKNOWN
           The user is not known to the system.

FILES         top

       /etc/security/limits.conf
           Default configuration file

EXAMPLES         top

       For the services you need resources limits (login for example)
       put a the following line in /etc/pam.d/login as the last line for
       that service (usually after the pam_unix session line):

           #%PAM-1.0
           #
           # Resource limits imposed on login sessions via pam_limits
           #
           session  required  pam_limits.so

       Replace "login" for each service you are using this module.

SEE ALSO         top

       limits.conf(5), pam.d(5), pam(8).

AUTHORS         top

       pam_limits was initially written by Cristian Gafton
       <[email protected]>

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the linux-pam (Pluggable Authentication
       Modules for Linux) project.  Information about the project can be
       found at ⟨http://www.linux-pam.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, see ⟨//www.linux-pam.org/⟩.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At
       that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
       the repository was 2023-12-18.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Linux-PAM Manual               12/22/2023                  PAM_LIMITS(8)

Pages that refer to this page: limits.conf(5)