ULIMIT(3) Linux Programmer's Manual ULIMIT(3) NAME ulimit - get and set user limits SYNOPSIS #include long ulimit(int cmd, long newlimit); DESCRIPTION Warning: This routine is obsolete. Use getrlimit(2), setrlimit(2), and sysconf(3) instead. For the shell command ulimit(), see bash(1). The ulimit() call will get or set some limit for the calling process. The cmd argument can have one of the following values. UL_GETFSIZE Return the limit on the size of a file, in units of 512 bytes. UL_SETFSIZE Set the limit on the size of a file. 3 (Not implemented for Linux.) Return the maximum possible address of the data segment. 4 (Implemented but no symbolic constant provided.) Return the maximum number of files that the calling process can open. RETURN VALUE On success, ulimit() returns a nonnegative value. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately. ERRORS EPERM A unprivileged process tried to increase a limit. ATTRIBUTES For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7). ┌──────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐ │Interface │ Attribute │ Value │ ├──────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤ │ulimit() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │ └──────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘ CONFORMING TO SVr4, POSIX.1-2001. POSIX.1-2008 marks ulimit() as obsolete. SEE ALSO bash(1), getrlimit(2), setrlimit(2), sysconf(3) COLOPHON This page is part of release 4.02 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/. Linux 2015-03-29 ULIMIT(3)