nproc

[Michael ODonnell]

> My first question is, does anyone know how nproc is calculated?
> I have seen some issues lately where the limits.conf hard limit
> is imposed, but the user hasn't exceeded the number of processes.

Don't forget that multithreaded processes (Java, WWW browsers, etc)
might bump you up against your limits sooner than you expected.
The H, L, m or T options (some need dashes?) with ps can show that.

 [...]

> Second, why can't I set a per user limit in limits.conf that
> is higher than the default (*) limit value?

I don't know, but I can see why you might wish it worked that way,
especially on a system with a lot of users.