Pure-FTPd has been ported to Solaris 8 since version 0.98.2, and works has
also be done for compatibility with older releases since 0.99pre2.
  
  Everything seems to work, thanks to Cirvam <erik@sublevo.com> and Matthias
Andree <matthias.andree@stud.uni-dortmund.de> who made this possible.

  There's only one important thing you must know about : fixed global
resource limits.

  Solaris uses a lot of static buffers. It means that you have limits for
the maximum number of users, the maximum number of file descriptors, etc.
These limits are defined at boot-time and applications can't bypass them.

  Some limits have reasonnable defaults. Other limits are really low by
default. Especially IPC limits. A lot of software using IPC won't run
without Solaris tuning. Oracle is an example. MQSeries is another example.
PostgreSQL often needs this, too. And Pure-FTPd is yet another example.

  What would happen to Pure-FTPd if you don't tune your system? Nothing bad
and really critical, but pure-ftpwho will not report anything if you are
accepting more than 25 simultaneous users. There's no workaround to
automagically make this work without system tuning. Or we have to recode the
pure-ftpwho stuff from scratch in a bloated and slower way. No, we won't do
this. Tune your system. If you are reading this, you're a skilled system
administrator, you have to tune your system. And your boss will congratulate
you.

  Issue the following command to check the current system limits :
  
  sysdef -i > /tmp/limits.txt

  Then, read /tmp/limits.txt with your favorite text editor (if you have no
favorite text editor, try Jed : ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/davis/jed/ . It
rocks) .

  The interesting variables with ridiculous default values are :
  
      semaphore identifiers (SEMMNI)
      semaphores in system (SEMMNS)
      undo structures in system (SEMMNU)
      max semaphores per id (SEMMSL)
      shared memory identifiers (SHMMNI)
   
  Increase all these. Their value should be at least the maximum number of
simultaneous you are expecting on the FTP server (the default is 50) . Add
some margin, other applications need this, too.

  To increase these values, add something like this to the /etc/system file :
  
set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax = 4294967295
set shmsys:shminfo_shmseg = 1024
set shmsys:shminfo_shmmni = 1024
set semsys:seminfo_semaem = 16384
set shmsys:shminfo_semmni = 1024
set semsys:seminfo_semmap = 1026
set semsys:seminfo_semmns = 16384
set semsys:seminfo_semmsl = 100
set semsys:seminfo_semopm = 100
set semsys:seminfo_semmnu = 2048
set semsys:seminfo_semume = 256

  (this is a cut&paste from an IBM web page about MQSeries) .
  
  Then, touch /reconfigure and reboot. Yes, reboot. It will be persistent,
then, no need to reboot any more after installing a new program, unless you
uninstall Solaris in favor of Windows.

  There's more info about tuning system variables in the Solaris System
Administration documentation.

  You can also search 'solaris semaphores number limit' on Google or any
other internet search engine. You will find a lot of links about this problem.


                          -Frank.