EC
153
BashERRORCriticalSignalHIGH confidence

File size limit exceeded (SIGXFSZ)

Production Risk

Common in environments with strict ulimits; implement log rotation and file size checks.

What this means

Exit code 153 (128+25) indicates that a process tried to write a file larger than the limit set by ulimit -f. The kernel sends SIGXFSZ when the file size soft limit is exceeded.

Why it happens
  1. 1Writing a file that exceeds ulimit -f (file size limit)
  2. 2A log file grows beyond the per-process file size limit
  3. 3Creating a large temporary file in a restricted environment
How to reproduce

Writing beyond the file size limit.

trigger — this will error
trigger — this will error
#!/bin/bash
# Set a 1KB file size limit (in 512-byte blocks)
(ulimit -f 2; dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/bigfile bs=1024 count=10)
echo "Exit: $?"

expected output

File size limit exceeded
Exit: 153

Fix 1

Increase the file size limit

WHEN The limit is too restrictive for legitimate use

Increase the file size limit
# Increase to 1GB (in 512-byte blocks)
ulimit -f $((1024 * 1024 * 2))  # 2M blocks = 1GB
your_command

Why this works

ulimit -f is in 512-byte blocks; multiply target size in bytes by 2 to get the block count.

Fix 2

Use log rotation to avoid unbounded file growth

WHEN A service generates large log files

Use log rotation to avoid unbounded file growth
# Use logrotate for managed log rotation
# /etc/logrotate.d/myapp:
/var/log/myapp.log {
  daily
  rotate 7
  compress
  maxsize 100M
}

Why this works

logrotate prevents any single log file from growing beyond maxsize.

Sources
Official documentation ↗

GNU Bash Manual — ulimit

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