In 2.3 in earlier this requires poking the kernel. In Solaris 2.4+, this can be accomplished by adding the following lines to /etc/system:
* set hard limit on file descriptors set rlim_fd_max = 4096 * set soft limit on file descriptors set rlim_fd_cur = 1024
Raising the soft limit past 256 may confuse certain applications, especially BCP applications. Raising the limit past 1024 may confuse applications that use select().
Programs using stdio or even library calls that use stdio may break when they have more than 256 files open as that is the stdio limit. Programs using many filedescriptors should try and reserve a number of low numbered file descriptors for use by stdio.