Centos – pam_limits.so making problems for sudo

I have a problem with my tomcat servers running on centos 7.
have 7 in all, set up alike. 4 have been patched recently and rebooted, remaining 3 has uptime of approx 2 years.

when I do:

sudo -u tomcat ls /tmp

I get error on the newly patched servers, stating :

sudo: pam_open_session: Permission denied
sudo: policy plugin failed session initialization

on the unpatched servers I get to execute the command.

/etc/security/limits are identical:

tomcat soft nofile 5000000
tomcat hard nofile 5000000
tomcat soft nproc  5000000
tomcat hard nproc  5000000

I can circumvent the errror by commenting out :

/etc/pam.d/sudo:

session    required     pam_limits.so

I dont get it ?

Am I looking in the right places ?

strace from both look like:

Failing:

strace -e setrlimit sudo -u tomcat ls /tmp
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC, {rlim_cur=RLIM64_INFINITY, rlim_max=RLIM64_INFINITY}) = 0
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC, {rlim_cur=1031015, rlim_max=1031015}) = 0
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC, {rlim_cur=5000000, rlim_max=5000000}) = 0
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, {rlim_cur=5000000, rlim_max=5000000}) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted)
sudo: pam_open_session: Permission denied
sudo: policy plugin failed session initialization
+++ exited with 1 +++"

working:

strace -e setrlimit sudo -u tomcat ls /tmp
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC, {rlim_cur=5000000, rlim_max=5000000}) = 0
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, {rlim_cur=5000000, rlim_max=5000000}) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted)
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC, {rlim_cur=RLIM64_INFINITY, rlim_max=RLIM64_INFINITY}) = 0
hs_err_pid13726.log  hsperfdata_cron  hsperfdata_tokor  hsperfdata_tomcat  systemd-private-U8GAP7
--- SIGCHLD {si_signo=SIGCHLD, si_code=CLD_EXITED, si_pid=28963, si_status=0, si_utime=0, si_stime=0} ---
+++ exited with 0 +++

pam version on working is : pam-1.1.8-12.el7_1.1.x86_64

and on non-working: pam-1.1.8-18.el7.x86_64