HP-UX Reference (11i v3 07/02) - 2 System Calls (vol 5)

ulimit(2) ulimit(2)

NAME

ulimit() - get and set user limits

SYNOPSIS

#include <ulimit.h>

long ulimit(int cmd, ...);

Remarks

The ANSI C ", ..." construct denotes a variable length argument list whose optional [or required]

members are given in the associated comment (

/* */).

DESCRIPTION

ulimit() provides for control over process limits. Available values for cmd are:

UL_GETFSIZE Get the ﬁle size limit of the process. The limit is in units of 512-byte blocks and

is inherited by child processes. Files of any size can be read. The optional

second argument is not used.

UL_SETFSIZE Set the ﬁle size limit of the process to the value of the optional second argument

which is taken as a long. Any process can decrease this limit, but only a process

with the LIMIT privilege can increase the limit. Note that the limit must be

speciﬁed in units of 512-byte blocks.

UL_GETMAXBRK Get the maximum possible break value (see brk(2)). Depending on system

resources such as swap space, this maximum might not be attainable at a given

time. The optional second argument is not used.

Security Restrictions

Some or all of the actions associated with this system call require the LIMIT privilege. Processes owned

by the superuser have this privilege. Processes owned by other users may have this privilege, depending on

system conﬁguration. See privileges (5) for more information about privileged access on systems that sup-

port ﬁne-grained privileges.

RETURN VALUE

Upon successful completion, a non-negative value is returned. Errors return a −1, with

errno set to indi-

cate the error.

ERRORS

ulimit() fails if one or more of the following conditions is true.

[EINVAL] cmd is not in the correct range.

[EPERM] ulimit() fails and the limit is unchanged if a process without the LIMIT privilege

attempts to increase its ﬁle size limit.