Never say "unlimited" in launchd.conf

I just thought my PowerMac had died on me because I did something stupid.

I run the dovecot IMAP server on this machine, and at one point I was getting into the limit of concurrently opened files. So looking up on the web, I saw that I could set it using "launchctl limit maxfiles 512 1024" ("launchctl limit maxfiles" was giving me "256 unlimited").

So I added to my /etc/launchd.conf a line "limit maxfiles 1024 unlimited". This was a bad idea.

At the next reboot, it would not boot. Looking at verbose output (command V at boot time), I saw a lot of "file: table full" right after the beginning of the boot. So I took a firewire cable, booted in target mode (T at boot time), and changed back the offending line.

My guess: "unlimited" is not understood in launchd.conf, so it's interpreted as 0: no file may be opened. This seriously compromised booting ;-)