Hi,

I was just testing specifying limit on file size to a user and have added the following to /etc/security/limits.conf

bob soft fsize 100

This basically should have said not to allow bob to create anyfile greater than 100Kb in size.

But the interesting thing is, if bob already has any file which is greater than 100Kb in size, it even doesn't allow to log him into the system both from console and SSH. Also nothing is logged in logs..

How do I configure it so that, bob can login to the system even though he has any file greater than 100Kb (but doesn't allow him to create file which are greater than 100Kb) ??

Hi there,

The reason he is not able to login because there is just one limit set i.e. soft limit and that is acting as a hard limit as well because you have not specified the hard limit exclusively.

You should edit the line to read as follows:

bob soft fsize 100
bob hard fsize 5000

Which will then set a soft limit of 100 KB and hard limit of 5 MB for Bob. And yes if he is not having any file which is bigger than 5 MB then he will be able to login.

Have a look at the following link: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-...r-process.html

I hope this helps.

ok... in that case, if I specify both hard and soft limits to the user and if the user exceeds his limit, why is he disallowed to even login ?

He should have only been supposed to disallow create files which are greater than 5Mb in that case. It should have been something like he should have been able to login, create any number of files less than 5Mb, but not a single file greater than 5Mb.

Heh. This is a new one on me! Indeed... "why t'hell not?"

Are you certain that login is disallowed? If so, are you certain that you are "using the whistles and bells" correctly?!