How do I set cgroup limits for systemd user slices?
This worked for me on Ubuntu 16.04:
Edit /etc/systemd/logind.conf
and set
UserTasksMax=12299
After rebooting my machine I could see the above value set (1000 is my UID):
cat /sys/fs/cgroup/pids/user.slice/user-1000.slice/pids.max
12299
Extract form man logind.conf:
UserTasksMax=
Sets the maximum number of OS tasks each user may run concurrently. This controls the TasksMax= setting of the per-user slice unit, see systemd.resource-control(5) for details. Defaults to 12288
(12K). If assigned the special value "infinity", no tasks limit is applied.
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Steve F
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Steve F almost 2 years
I would like to limit usage of a system on a per user basis. Since Systemd has native support for cgroups, I think using user slices is the way to go.
The problem is: I can't figure out how to set individual limits. I can edit the user.slice unit file to set limits that collectively apply to all user slices, but I don't see a way to template these user slices.
I can override these settings for individual users by creating a user-(uid).slice unit file, but I would prefer to apply limits by default to all users.
Is it possible to set default limits?
Edit: After poking around some more, I found the unit files for the user slices are created in /run/systemd/system/.
[foo@bar Downloads]$ systemctl cat user-1000.slice # /run/systemd/system/user-1000.slice # Transient stub # /run/systemd/system/user-1000.slice.d/50-After-systemd-logind\x2eservice.conf [Unit] After=systemd-logind.service # /run/systemd/system/user-1000.slice.d/50-After-systemd-user-sessions\x2eservice.conf [Unit] After=systemd-user-sessions.service # /run/systemd/system/user-1000.slice.d/50-Description.conf [Unit] Description=User Slice of foo # /run/systemd/system/user-1000.slice.d/50-TasksMax.conf [Slice] TasksMax=infinity
These files are constructed by this segment of code in systemd: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/401e33ed56f3cd3736bbab02ca6eb31aa592cf53/src/login/logind-dbus.c#L2928-L2998
The creation of this file seems to be hard coded into the systemd source and doesn't allow for templates.
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Admin over 6 yearsThis remains an open issue in systemd.
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Admin over 6 years@MichaelHampton Thanks for linking that issue. Looks like I have my answer, and that answer is "no", at least not with Systemd
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Admin over 3 yearssystemd v239 closed the issue, apparently now you can create an dropin directory such as "user-.slice.d".
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