how to set ulimit / file descriptor on docker container the image tag is phusion/baseimage-docker

Question

I need to set the file descriptor limit correctly on the docker container I connect to container with ssh (https://github.com/phusion/baseimage-docker)

Already tried:

• edit limits.conf the container ignore this file
• upstart procedure found at https://coderwall.com/p/myodcq but this docker image has different kind of init process. (runit)
• I tried to modify configuration of pam library in /etc/pam.d
• try to enabled pam for ssh in sshd_config

The output it always the same.

bash: ulimit: open files: cannot modify limit: Operation not permitted

Answer 1

The latest docker supports setting ulimits through the command line and the API. For instance, docker run takes --ulimit <type>=<soft>:<hard> and there can be as many of these as you like. So, for your nofile, an example would be --ulimit nofile=262144:262144