Pam limits

This topic details how to enable the "su" pam_limits.so module required by Vertica. The installer reports issues with the setting with the identifier: S0070.

On some systems the pam module called pam_limits.so is not set in the file /etc/pam.d/su. When it is not set, it prevents the conveying of limits (such as open file descriptors) to any command started with su -.

In particular, the Vertica init script would fail to start Vertica because it calls the Administration Tools to start a database with the su - command. This problem was first noticed on Debian systems, but the configuration could be missing on other Linux distributions. See the pam_limits man page for more details.

The installer automatically configures the correct setting if the default value does not meet system requirements. If an issue occurs when setting this value, or you use the --no-system-configuration argument to the installer and the current setting is incorrect, then the installer reports this as an issue.

All systems

To manually configure this setting, append the following line to the /etc/pam.d/su file:

session required pam_limits.so

See the pam_limits man page for more details: man pam_limits.