The following reply was made to PR kern/35021; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Drahos Cagan <drahos@shaw.ca>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: kern/35021
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2006 13:32:08 -0800

 I have been experiencing a similar problem with netbsd-4 and 
 netbsd-current. To demonstrate the issue, I did the following 7 steps. I 
 intentionally used pid ($$=1978) instead of curproc:
 
 1.1. log in as a regular user
 
 1.2. echo $$
 1978
 
 1.3. $ sysctl proc.1978.rlimit.descriptors.soft
 proc.1978.rlimit.descriptors.soft = 1024
 
 1.4. $ sysctl -w proc.1978.rlimit.descriptors.soft=1772
 proc.1978.rlimit.descriptors.soft: 1024 -> 1772
 
 1.5. (staying logged in)
 
 2.1. log in as root
 
 2.2. $ sysctl -w proc.1978.rlimit.descriptors.soft=1024
 sysctl: proc.1978.rlimit.descriptors.soft: sysctl() failed with 
 Operation not permitted
 
 This feature used to work in netbsd-3 and abandoned-netbsd-4.