limits.conf not being read when logging in

Question

I have 2 entries in my limits.conf,

*       hard        nofile      10240
*       soft        nofile      4096

but running ulimit -Sn or ulimit -Hn only displays the default values.

gabriel@server:~$ ulimit -Sn
1024
gabriel@server:~$ ulimit -Hn
4096

It works fine on one server but on another it's as if they're being ignored. I did have a problem with apt-get autoremove for some old kernels on this one server which I didn't have on the other, I didn't note it down but I'm quite able to reboot.

Answer 1

Turned out it was down to the custom ssh configuration we had, it was not using the pam modules so the limits were not getting set.