limit

NAME

limit - limit resource usage

SYNOPSIS

limit [-h] [resource [maximum-use]]

DESCRIPTION

This command is a C-shell built-in command.

The limit(1) command restricts the consumption by the current process and each process it creates so that none of the processes can individually exceed maximum-use on the specified resource. If no maximum-use is given, the current limit is printed; if no resource is given, all limitations are given. If the -h flag is given, the hard limits are used instead of the current limits. The hard limits impose a ceiling on the values of the current limits. Only a user with appropriate permissions can raise the hard limits, but any user can lower or raise the current limits within the established range.

Controllable resources currently include:

cputime

The maximum number of cpu-seconds to be used by each process.

filesize

The largest single file that can be created.

datasize

The maximum growth of the data+stack region through sbrk(3) beyond the end of the program text.

stacksize

The maximum size of the automatically extended stack region.

coredumpsize

The size of the largest core dump that will be created.

memoryuse

The maximum amount of physical memory a process can have allocated to it at a given time.

The maximum-use argument can be given as a (floating point or integer) number followed by a scale factor. For all limits other than cputime, the default scale is 'k' or 'kilobytes' (1024 bytes); a scale factor of 'm' or 'megabytes' can also be used. For cputime, the default scaling is 'seconds', while 'm' for minutes or 'h' for hours, or a time of the form 'mm:ss' (giving minutes and seconds) can be used.

For both resource names and scale factors, unambiguous prefixes of the names suffice.