ulimit PICKLE: "Operation not permitted" and "Command not found"

ulimit is a shell built-in, not an external command. It needs to be built in because it acts on the shell process itself, like cd: the limits, like the current directory, are a property of that particular process.

sudo bash -c 'ulimit -n 4096' would work, but it would change the limit for the bash process invoked by sudo only, which would not help you.

There are two values for each limit: the hard limit and the soft limit. Only root can raise the hard limit; anyone can lower the hard limit, and the soft limit can be modified in either direction with the only constraint that it cannot be higher than the hard limit. The soft limit is the actual value that matters.

Therefore you need to arrange that all your processes have a hard limit for open files of at least 4096. You can keep the soft limit at 1024. Before launching that process that requires a lot of files, raise the soft limit. In /etc/security/limits.conf, add the lines

paislee hard nofile 4096
paislee soft nofile 1024

where paislee is the name of the user you want to run your process as. In the shell that launches the process for which you want a higher limit, run

ulimit -Sn unlimited

to raise the soft limit to the hard limit.

open the file /etc/security/limits.conf and add the line <user> soft nofile <value>. for using ulimit change to root user and try the same.