In the following code:

139     struct rlimit limit;
140 
141     method = "rlimit";
142     if (getrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, &limit) < 0) {
143       perror("calling getrlimit");
144       exit(1);
145     }
146 
147     /* set the current to the maximum or specified value */
148     if (max_desired_fds)
149       limit.rlim_cur = max_desired_fds;
150     else {
151         limit.rlim_cur = limit.rlim_max;
152     }
153 
154     if (setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, &limit) < 0) {
155       perror("calling setrlimit");
156       exit(1);
157     }

the setrlimit line fails (I get the error "calling setrlimit"). Further investigation shows that limit.rlim_max is -1, which is not a valid value. Any ideas why would this be? This is on Mac OSX.

• macos
• bsd
• setrlimit

If setrlimit fails, try again with rlim_cur set to OPEN_MAX. For example, see http://source.winehq.org/source/libs/wine/loader.c#L653. (The comment mentioning Leopard means that Leopard first introduced that behavior. Read it as Leopard-and-later.)

ETA: See the note in COMPATIBILITY in the setrlimit(2) man page.