When under linux (2.6.30.x), I type ulimit -p and get a return value of "8".
from the man page this is in 512-byte blocks and may not be set. But if I look into the linux man page: man 7 pipe, under "pipe capacity", I see: In Linux versions before 2.6.11, the capacity of a pipe was the same as the system page size (e.g., 4096 bytes on i386). Since Linux 2.6.11, the pipe capacity is 65536 bytes. Of course given standard PC memories for modern systems being measured in Gigabytes, a 64K limit seems ludicrous, but I realize this is an internal (and fixed) internal kernel value on linux. Is there a way to actually read the size of a pipe buffer under linux? A brief look over my linux man pages shows no system call that would allow one to determine the system pipe buffer size, let alone any way to set it. Linda