ulimit: max user processes: cannot modify limit (when starting oracle)

[Michael Velez]

Hello all,

My oracle startup script has started to produce this error:

ulimit: max user processes: cannot modify limit: Operation not permitted

This happens because I call:

runuser - oracle -c "$ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart"

in the startup script, causing the /etc/profile to be read, where I have the
following line:

ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536

I have properly given the permissions to user oracle to increase its limits
by having the following in /etc/security/limits.conf:

oracle	soft	nproc		2047
oracle	hard	nproc		16384
oracle	soft	nofile	1024
oracle	hard	nofile	65536

and, in the /etc/pam.d/login file, I have:

session	required	/lib/security/pam_limits.so


I know these permissions work because when I do a:

ulimit -u 16384

on the command line while logged in as oracle, I do not get the 'Operation
denied' error message.

However, in the script, I do get the error message, whether it is at boot
time or if I type on the command line (logged in as root):

service oracle start

I believe this has started not too long ago because I used to be able to
type 'service oracle start' without any error message displayed.

Has anybody else come across this?

Michael