How to increase the file descriptor limit

Hi,

I am creating an alpine linux image in Docker running java and apache JMeter. While I was able to increase the maximum amount of processes using "ulimit -p unlimited", I seem to be unable to do so with file descriptors, using "ulimit -n unlimited". It seems to be unable to set the limit with anything past a certain amount, as I tried 2048, and that worked.

The sysctl paramater seems to have it as a higher number. Anyone know what the problem may be?

EDIT: I figured it out, docker itself sets the ulimit properties of the container, and can be overridden when the alpine linux container is started up.