What Is a Ulimit Soft Limit?
A ulimit soft limit is the actively enforced cap on a per-process resource like the number of open files, stack size, or processes. A process can lower it freely or raise it up to the matching hard limit. Crossing the soft limit triggers an error such as too many open files.
Why it matters
A runner whose soft limit on open files is too low fails builds that open many descriptors at once. Raising the soft limit, when the hard limit allows, is a common fix for resource-exhaustion failures in CI.
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