Problems with ulimit

[fedora at cjs226.com]

I'm trying to up the number of allowable open files for users.  I've added
the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf:
  - fs.file-max=65500
and then added the following lines to /etc/security/limits.conf:
  - johndoe soft nofile 4096
  - johndoe hard nofile 32768
Following a reboot, when johndoes logs in, he does a ulimit -H -n, but
still sees 1024.  Likewise, when he does a ulimit -n 4096, he gets
"bash: ulimit: cannot modify limit: Operation not permitted".

What am I missing?