From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Oct 9 16:29:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id QAA07537 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 16:29:42 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from rh173-26.reshall.ucsd.edu (rh173-26.reshall.ucsd.edu [128.54.173.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id QAA07532 for ; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 16:29:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from taco@mad.scientist.com) Received: from jaguar.atcg.com (localhost.ucsd.EDU [127.0.0.1]) by rh173-26.reshall.ucsd.edu (8.8.5/8.8.3) with SMTP id QAA00906; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 16:28:25 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <343D6899.3F54BC7E@mad.scientist.com> Date: Thu, 09 Oct 1997 16:28:25 -0700 From: "Todd \"Taco\" Hansen" X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE i386) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Sri Ramkrishna CC: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: wierd problem with forking. References: <199710091821.LAA01034@ichips.intel.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Each user is only allowed to have so many processes running at a time. This is just an idea but if you fork bomb your computer you will see it happen. :) Sri Ramkrishna wrote: > > I'm not sure if other people have gotten this problem, but I've been > getting it a lot and I'm trying to figure out what it is. If I open > about 5 windows, and netscape, I can't seem to type any program that > wants to fork. For instance if I try to do a "man -k sendmail" or > something like that, the fork fails and the man command kicks out. While > trying to determine why the fork failed I wrote a short C program that > would fork and exit. If the fork failed I capture the errno. However > the fork program works everytime, while the man command fails. Whats > going on here? > > I'm using the generic kernel in almost everything except for some of the > drivers. But the other options remain the same. I have a PPro 150Mhz > machine with 32 megs EDO running FreeBSD 2.2.2. > > I can give you some information like, when I do a vmstat (I thought I > was running out of memory) I find that 26meg is on the avl list and > about 6meg on the free list. The machine doesn't indicate swapping, > so it isn't memory. Can swap space be the culprit? I've set swap space > to be twice the physical memory. So I have a 64 meg swap space. Any > ideas would be great. > > sri > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > Sriram Ramkrishna | Intel Corporation > Unix System Adminstrator | MD-6 Division, Technical Support > phone: 503-264-3529 | email: sramkris@ichips.intel.com > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > -- Todd Hansen, KD6YPS (Taco) taco@mad.scientist.com http://millenium.atcg.com/ "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive...it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it" - Declaration Of Independence