From owner-freebsd-hackers  Fri Dec  8 14:52:12 1995
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Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 14:52:04 -0800
From: Joe McGuckin <joe@ns.via.net>
Message-Id: <199512082252.OAA07846@ns.via.net>
To: hackers@freebsd.org
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I have a 100MHZ pentium that I use as a web and FTP server. Recently
we've been seeing Apache complaining about "can't spawn process". After
making it print out errno from the failing fork(), we're getting EAGAIN.

I make a kernel with maxusers == 50 thinking that this would solve my problem.
but it didn't.

Normally the system runs with 65-70 processes. When it gets to 99 or 100 it 
refuses to fork any more.

Where is this limit set? How can I increase it? What other resources can I 
tweak for a heavily loaded machine?

Thanks,

  Joe


Also, here's the output from sysctl:



kern.ostype = FreeBSD
kern.osrelease = 2.0.5-RELEASE
kern.osrevision = 199306
kern.version = FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE #0: Wed Nov 29 10:15:55 PST 1995
    joe@ovation.via.net:/usr/src/sys/compile/GENERIC

kern.maxvnodes = 2577
kern.maxproc = 820
kern.maxfiles = 1640
kern.argmax = 65536
kern.securelevel = -1
kern.hostname = ovation.via.net
kern.hostid = 0
kern.clockrate: hz = 100, tick = 10000, profhz = 1024, stathz = 128
kern.posix1version = 198808
kern.ngroups = 16
kern.job_control = 1
kern.saved_ids = 1
kern.boottime = Wed Nov 29 11:25:50 1995
kern.domainname = 
kern.update = 30
kern.osreldate = 199504
kern.bootfile = /kernel
kern.maxfilesperproc = 1640
kern.maxprocperuid = 819
kern.dumpdev = disabled
vm.loadavg: 0.04 0.12 0.13
net.inet.ip.forwarding = 0
net.inet.ip.redirect = 1
net.inet.ip.ttl = 64
net.inet.ip.rtexpire = 93
net.inet.ip.rtminexpire = 10
net.inet.ip.rtmaxcache = 128
net.inet.ip.sourceroute = 0
net.inet.icmp.maskrepl = 0
net.inet.tcp.rfc1323 = 1
net.inet.tcp.rfc1644 = 1
net.inet.tcp.mssdflt = 512
net.inet.tcp.rttdflt = 3
net.inet.tcp.keepidle = 14400
net.inet.tcp.keepintvl = 150
net.inet.tcp.sendspace = 16384
net.inet.tcp.recvspace = 16384
net.inet.udp.checksum = 1
net.inet.udp.maxdgram = 9216
net.inet.udp.recvspace = 41600
hw.machine = i386
hw.model = Pentium 815\100
hw.ncpu = 1
hw.byteorder = 1234
hw.physmem = 33161216
hw.usermem = 26583040
hw.pagesize = 4096
hw.floatingpoint = 1
machdep.adjkerntz = 28800
machdep.disable_rtc_set = 0
user.cs_path = /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:
user.bc_base_max = 99
user.bc_dim_max = 2048
user.bc_scale_max = 99
user.bc_string_max = 1000
user.coll_weights_max = 0
user.expr_nest_max = 32
user.line_max = 2048
user.re_dup_max = 255
user.posix2_version = 199212
user.posix2_c_bind = 0
user.posix2_c_dev = 0
user.posix2_char_term = 0
user.posix2_fort_dev = 0
user.posix2_fort_run = 0
user.posix2_localedef = 0
user.posix2_sw_dev = 0
user.posix2_upe = 0
user.stream_max = 20
user.tzname_max = 255