diff --git a/libnetutil/netutil.cc b/libnetutil/netutil.cc
index ff7279e52..19fe0ab12 100644
--- a/libnetutil/netutil.cc
+++ b/libnetutil/netutil.cc
@@ -4722,7 +4722,7 @@ int set_max_open_descriptors(int desired_max) {
 
     if (!getrlimit(flag, &r)) {
         /* If current limit is less than the desired, try to increase it */
-        if(r.rlim_cur < (rlim_t)desired_max){
+        if(r.rlim_cur != RLIM_INFINITY && r.rlim_cur < (rlim_t)desired_max){
             if(desired_max<0){
                 r.rlim_cur=r.rlim_max; /* Set maximum */
             }else{
@@ -4732,6 +4732,7 @@ int set_max_open_descriptors(int desired_max) {
                ; // netutil_debug("setrlimit(%d, %p) failed", flag, r);
             if (!getrlimit(flag, &r)) {
                 maxfds = r.rlim_cur;
+                // NOTE: This may be RLIM_INFINITY, which is -1 (~0UL) on Linux.
                 return maxfds;
             }else {
                 return 0;
diff --git a/nmap.cc b/nmap.cc
index 630d43bd7..bad1d53b3 100644
--- a/nmap.cc
+++ b/nmap.cc
@@ -1994,8 +1994,8 @@ int nmap_main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
                                SIGPIPE */
 #endif
 
-  if (o.max_parallelism && (i = max_sd()) && i < o.max_parallelism) {
-    error("WARNING: Your specified max_parallel_sockets of %d, but your system says it might only give us %d.  Trying anyway", o.max_parallelism, i);
+  if (o.max_parallelism && (i = max_sd()) > 0 && i < o.max_parallelism) {
+    error("WARNING: max_parallelism is %d, but your system says it might only give us %d sockets.  Trying anyway", o.max_parallelism, i);
   }
 
   if (o.debugging > 1)