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sh-2.04$ ulimit -a core file size (blocks) 1000000 data seg size (kbytes) unlimited file size (blocks) unlimited max locked memory (kbytes) unlimited max memory size (kbytes) unlimited open files 1024 pipe size (512 bytes) 8 stack size (kbytes) 8192 cpu time (seconds) unlimited max user processes 8073 virtual memory (kbytes) unlimited sh-2.04$ sort foo bar baz bar baz foo sh-2.04$ ulimit -v 262144 sh-2.04$ sort sort: memory exhausted sh-2.04$ ulimit -a core file size (blocks) 1000000 data seg size (kbytes) unlimited file size (blocks) unlimited max locked memory (kbytes) unlimited max memory size (kbytes) unlimited open files 1024 pipe size (512 bytes) 8 stack size (kbytes) 8192 cpu time (seconds) unlimited max user processes 8073 virtual memory (kbytes) 262144 Setting of the limit as above worked fine with the linux-2.4.0-0.43 kernel.
this is a bug in sort; sort tries to allocate 2/3rds of physical memory regardless of what it is sorting
Used to, until we fixed it up a while before the 7.1 release.