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PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT |
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ULIMIT(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual ULIMIT(1P)
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The
Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
ulimit — set or report file size limit
ulimit [-f] [blocks]
The ulimit utility shall set or report the file-size writing limit
imposed on files written by the shell and its child processes
(files of any size may be read). Only a process with appropriate
privileges can increase the limit.
The ulimit utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
POSIX.1‐2017, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following option shall be supported:
-f Set (or report, if no blocks operand is present), the
file size limit in blocks. The -f option shall also be
the default case.
The following operand shall be supported:
blocks The number of 512-byte blocks to use as the new file
size limit.
Not used.
None.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
ulimit:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null. (See the Base
Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2,
Internationalization Variables for the precedence of
internationalization variables used to determine the
values of locale categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values
of all the other internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences
of bytes of text data as characters (for example,
single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in
arguments).
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
standard error.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the
processing of LC_MESSAGES.
Default.
The standard output shall be used when no blocks operand is
present. If the current number of blocks is limited, the number of
blocks in the current limit shall be written in the following
format:
"%d\n", <number of 512-byte blocks>
If there is no current limit on the number of blocks, in the POSIX
locale the following format shall be used:
"unlimited\n"
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
None.
None.
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 A request for a higher limit was rejected or an error
occurred.
Default.
The following sections are informative.
Since ulimit affects the current shell execution environment, it
is always provided as a shell regular built-in. If it is called in
a separate utility execution environment, such as one of the
following:
nohup ulimit -f 10000
env ulimit 10000
it does not affect the file size limit of the caller's
environment.
Once a limit has been decreased by a process, it cannot be
increased (unless appropriate privileges are involved), even back
to the original system limit.
Set the file size limit to 51200 bytes:
ulimit -f 100
None.
None.
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 8,
Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017, ulimit(3p)
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
(C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,
Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between
this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard,
the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee
document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2017 ULIMIT(1P)
Pages that refer to this page: prlimit(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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