su: cannot set user id: Resource temporarily unavailable

Environment

Novell Open Enterprise Server (Linux based)
Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9

Situation

Unable to login as a particular user
Unable to start an SSH session as a particular user
Unable to "su" as a particular user
All the processes started by the affected user stop working
ERROR: su: cannot set user id: Resource temporarily unavailable

Resolution

The affected user has reached the maximum number of process specified for him into the file /etc/security/limits.conf .

These commands, executed as root, can give you the number of process and of open files for the given user:

ps -U username | wc -l

lsof | grep username | wc -l

To fix the issue increase the NPROC Soft limit according to the user and applications needs; please look at the note below about the /etc/security/limits.conf file.

If third party software is involved, please contact the software vendor to advice about the proper limits to use.

Additional Information

The following is an example configuration file:

# EXAMPLE /etc/security/limits.conf file:
# =======================================
#     
*          soft   nproc       2047
*         hard   nproc       16384
*         soft   nofile       2048
*         hard   nofile      65536

Having this file means, for instance, that every user can start a maximum of 2047 processes and can raise this limit up to 16384.

来自http://www.novell.com/support/kb/doc.php?id=3007194