# Hitting pf states limit



## saznik (Sep 19, 2012)

Hello, one of my FreeBSD 9 machines is nearly hitting the states limit. The machine had the limit 10000. Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought reading somewhere that the default states limit was increased to 30000 with FreeBSD 9? Other machines have the limit at 30000 using the default value. Strangely one machine has 20000 as the limit.

Now I increased the limit 
	
	



```
set limit states 20000
```

OpenBSD Manual says the default is 10000. Searching the Internet didn't help me and I can't find anything saying something about a limit of 30000. Maybe someone can help me. Why is the limit on 2 machines different with default settings and is the default states limit 30000 in FreeBSD 9?


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## DutchDaemon (Sep 19, 2012)

The default state limit in pf is (still) 10,000 in FreeBSD 9. Any higher limit should be set in pf.conf.


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## saznik (Sep 20, 2012)

That's a clear statement. Then I have to find out why the other machines have such a high limit. Because in pf.conf there is no limit defined and it should use defaults (10000).


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## plamaiziere (Sep 20, 2012)

saznik said:
			
		

> That's a clear statement. Then I have to find out why the other machines have such a high limit



May be it was changed on the fly. With something like

```
echo 'set limit states 20000' | pfctl -mf -
```


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