Ulimit -p

Question

Oracle documentation 10.2, Linux 4
Depending on the oracle user's default shell, make the following changes to the default shell start-up file:
For the Bourne, Bash, or Korn shell, add the following lines to the /etc/profile file (or the file on SUSE systems)/etc/profile.local:
if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then
if [ $SHELL = "/bin/ksh" ]; then
ulimit -p 16384
ulimit -n 65536
else
ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536
fi
fi
Result
[oracle@localhost ~]$ ulimit -p 16384
-bash: ulimit: pipe size: cannot modify limit: Invalid argument
???

Answer 1

1. You are using Bash shell (not ksh), so the message "-bash: ulimit: pipe size: cannot modify limit: Invalid argument" is pretty clear and valid because "uname -p 16384" is not valid for Bash.
2. Now check the shell condition in script above.
It says that if user's shell is "ksh" then it will execute "uname -p 16384" otherwise it will execute "ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536" (which is valid also for bash).
So you need to use "ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536" command.
I suggest you to copy whole script to /etc/profile because non-privileged user can't change some limits.