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After installing and starting Ardour I receive the following warning message:

WARNING: Your system has a limit for maximum amount of locked memory. This might cause Ardour to run out of memory before your system runs out of memory.

You can view the memory limit with 'ulimit -l', and it is normally controlled by /etc/security/limits.conf

How to configure properly Ardour to avoid this message?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Launch a terminal (CTRL-ALT-T) and open the file in gedit with admin priveldges:

sudo gedit /etc/security/limits.conf

Be sure that the file contains the following line:

@audio - memlock unlimited

If it doesn't exist, add it. If it does exist, be sure the line doesn't begin with a # and is below any other lines in the file beginning with @audio. This will allow any user in the audio group to avoid memlock limits. Save, close the editor, then add your user to the group by running the command

sudo adduser $USER audio

Close the terminal, log out and back in again, and reopen Ardour. The message should be gone. 

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  • I fixed this code window.. needed a dash. Thanks for the tip.. it works now. You can test this with ulmit -l
    – Bhikkhu Subhuti
    Sep 29, 2016 at 0:22
  • The above didn't work for me on Ubuntu 16.10. instead I followed these directions. The narration is in German but the commands are all the same ... wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Tonstudio/Konfiguration/…
    – somethis
    Apr 14, 2017 at 0:40
  • @somethis yes, we have to add @audio - memlock unlimited with the dash, it looks like a mistake in this answer.
    – baptx
    Jan 20, 2018 at 14:09
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As it is a warning you can safely ignore it. However to change it, open the file /etc/security/limits.conf with an editor. You'll find a line there which reads:

@audio - memlock SOME_NUMBER

You can comment out this line (put a # in front of it) or change SOME_NUMBER to the word unlimited. Now Ardour should not spit out a warning.

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  • Nice! I will give it a try this week since I have a recording session. Thanks!
    – Rubens Mariuzzo
    Feb 5, 2013 at 13:40
  • Unlike many warnings, it is NOT TRUE you can ignore this warning. When recording in real time with Ardour, if you run out of memory, it will affect the recording. I would not say you can " safely ignore it" . For this reason I am downvoting this answer.
    – Panther
    Apr 8, 2015 at 23:20
  • What does it mean? Why it only appears in this software and not Chrome for example?
    – Nicolay77
    Mar 28, 2023 at 19:35

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