resource limits and login.conf

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

I, like surely most people, am finding the default resource limits way
too small, and wanting to increase them.  The machine in question is a
workstation with 32 GB of RAM running NetBSD 10 amd64.

(This note is about configuring one's systems, and avoids discussion of
changing defaults.)

I read login.conf(5) and added

  daemon:\
          :ignorenologin:\
          :datasize=4000M:\
          :openfiles=1024:\
          :maxproc=1024:\
          :maxthread=1024:\

  default|regular user:\
          :datasize=16000M:\
          :openfiles=8000:\
          :maxproc=2048:\
          :maxthread=8192:\

  (I realize datasize is perhaps not so relevant if malloc maps anoymous
  memory instead of using sbrk(2).)

but I see no change.  ulimit -a in shell (in tmux, where tmux was
started in an xterm, under xfce, after xinit .xsession):

  number of threads                   (-T) 16288
  socket buffer size           (bytes, -b) unlimited
  core file size              (blocks, -c) unlimited
  data seg size               (kbytes, -d) 262144
  file size                   (blocks, -f) unlimited
  max locked memory           (kbytes, -l) 10737728
  max memory size             (kbytes, -m) 32213184
  open files                          (-n) 1024
  pipe size                (512 bytes, -p) 1
  stack size                  (kbytes, -s) 4096
  cpu time                   (seconds, -t) unlimited
  max user processes                  (-u) 1024
  virtual memory              (kbytes, -v) unlimited

  (which points out that I should not set maxthreads, but that's not the
  point).

login.conf(5) mentions cap_mkdb in SEE ALSO, but it doesn't say that the
text version isn't read if the login.conf.db doesn't exist.  But running
cap_mkdb doesn't seem to help.

Do people think login.conf works, and is there some trick other than
changing the file, and perhaps rebooting (I'm all set with that, thanks
to ZFS deadlocking!).  I would expect a fresh login process to read it,
so 'ssh localhost ulimit -a' should show the intended values.