title: Linux #open-file limit
body: <p>we are facing a situation where a process gets stuck due to running out of open files limit. The global setting file-max was set extremely high (set in sysctl.conf) &amp; per-user value also was set to a high value in /etc/security/limits.conf. Even ulimit -n reflects the per-user value when ran as that head-less user (process-owner). So the question is, does this change require system reboot (my understanding is it doesn't) ? Has anyone faced the similar problem ? I am running ubuntu lucid &amp; the application is a java process. #of ephemeral port range too is high enough, &amp; when checked during the issue, the process had opened #1024 (Note the default value) files (As reported by lsof).</p>