Hi I'm trying to configure init and xinetd for files. I have tried /etc/security/limits.conf but the issue with this approach, is that it doesn't cover processes started by either init or xinetd. For instance, if the process is started during server boot it does not use what is in /etc/security/limits.conf.

Any assistance would be appreciate.

/etc/security/limits.conf is a part of PAM. Services and users settings ulimits apply to will have a PAM stack in /etc/pam.d/ invoking the PAM "limits" module (as in see for yourself with 'grep -r'). With Xinetd however you shouldn't need to use ulimit as 'man xinetd.conf' tells you to use "rlimit_files". For init the maximum open files is a sysctl as in 'sysctl -w fs.file-max=[someValue]': also see /etc/sysctl.conf and 'man sysctl'.

unSpawn thank you so much for responding. I will take note of your advice and keep my fingers crossed.

Well...I still didn't achieve my quest.

We have some processes that need the max open files for a process set higher than the OS default of 1024. We have set it in /etc/security/limits.conf to handle normal log on sessions but we have a process that starts on boot and another from xinetd that need the limits set higher as well.

On the RHEL5 systems in question, I don't see "rlimit_files" in the xinetd.conf man page and putting it in the appropriate /etc/xeintd.d conf file resulted in an error:
Jun 3 09:42:03 nldglab-23 [daemon.warn<28>] xinetd[22288]: bad service attribute: rlimit_files [file=/etc/xinetd.d/pblocald] [line=12]
This seems to be new to RHEL6.

My understanding is that fs.file-max is a system wide open file max and not a per user/process setting so that isn't what we want.

Basically I am looking for where to set the maximum number of open file descriptors for all processes whether started from init (server boot), xinetd or a login shell.

No, it's definitely in RHEL 5.