Ubuntu
pam package

  1. Bug #65244
  2. Comment #1

Comment 1 for bug 65244

Revision history for this message
Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel) wrote : Re: ulimits not set accrding to /etc/security/limits.conf for root

Thanks for your report. As you said this is not a bug in pam but a documentation issue.
The fact to allow explicitly allow limits for user root has been addressed a while ago (30 Aug 2000) but you need to explicitly name user root to apply the limits.
For example (/etc/security/limits.conf):
* soft core 0
root soft core 0

The first line doesn't affect superuser (zero core dump size), but the second one does.
Group and default limits aren't processed, per-user limits get applied even if the user is root.