Linux Kernel limits

Max. number of processes

NR_TASKS 512
MAX_TASKS_PER_USER (NR_TASKS/2)

Sempahores

SEMMNI  128             /* ?  max # of semaphore identifiers */
SEMMSL  32              /* <= 512 max num of semaphores per id */
SEMMNS  (SEMMNI*SEMMSL) /* ? max # of semaphores in system */
SEMOPM  32              /* ~ 100 max num of ops per semop call */
SEMVMX  32767           /* semaphore maximum value */

/* unused */
SEMUME  SEMOPM          /* max num of undo entries per process */
SEMMNU  SEMMNS          /* num of undo structures system wide */
SEMAEM  (SEMVMX >> 1)   /* adjust on exit max value */
SEMMAP  SEMMNS          /* # of entries in semaphore map */
SEMUSZ  20              /* sizeof struct sem_undo */

Shared memory

/*
 * Keep _SHM_ID_BITS as low as possible since SHMMNI 
 * depends on it and there is a static array of size SHMMNI.
 */
_SHM_ID_BITS    7
_SHM_IDX_BITS   15

/*
 * _SHM_ID_BITS + _SHM_IDX_BITS must be <= 24 on the i386 and
 * SHMMAX <= (PAGE_SIZE << _SHM_IDX_BITS).
 */
SHMMAX 0x2000000                /* max shared seg size (bytes) */
SHMMIN 1 /* really PAGE_SIZE */ /* min shared seg size (bytes) */
SHMMNI (1<<_SHM_ID_BITS)        /* max num of segs system wide */
SHMALL (1<<(_SHM_IDX_BITS+_SHM_ID_BITS))
                                /* max shm system wide (pages) */
SHMLBA PAGE_SIZE                /* attach addr a multiple of this */
SHMSEG SHMMNI                   /* max shared segs per process */

Number of open files

NR_INODE 3072   /* this should be bigger than NR_FILE */
NR_FILE 1024    /* this can well be larger on a larger system */

Extract from /usr/src/linux-2.1.103/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt:

file-max and file-nr

The kernel allocates filehandles dynamically up to a limit specified by file-max.

The value in file-max denotes the maximum number of file- handles that the Linux kernel will allocate. When you get lots of error messages about running out of file handles, you might want to increase this limit.

The three values in file-nr denote the number of allocated file handles, the number of used file handles and the maximum number of file handles. When the allocated filehandles come close to the maximum, but the number of actually used ones is far behind, you've encountered a peak in your filehandle usage and you don't need to increase the maximum.

inode-max and inode-state

As with filehandles, the kernel allocates the inode structures up to a limit specified by inode-max.

The value in inode-max denotes the maximum number of inode handlers. This value should be 3-4 times larger than the value in file-max, since stdin, stdout and network sockets also need an inode struct to handle them. When you regularly run out of inodes, you need to increase this value.

The file inode-nr contains two values, nr_inodes and nr_free_inodes. Nr_inodes stands for the number of inodes the system has allocated, this can be slightly more than inode-max because Linux allocates them one pageful at a time. Nr_free_inodes represents the number of free inodes (?).

Number of pty devices