From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Dec 13 16:39:32 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA04446 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Sun, 13 Dec 1998 16:39:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from scientia.demon.co.uk (scientia.demon.co.uk [212.228.14.13]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA04438 for ; Sun, 13 Dec 1998 16:39:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ben@scientia.demon.co.uk) Received: from ben by scientia.demon.co.uk with local (Exim 2.054 #18) id 0zpIKe-0004gK-00; Sun, 13 Dec 1998 20:41:36 +0000 Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 20:41:36 +0000 From: Ben Smithurst To: Sue Blake Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cannot fork Message-ID: <19981213204136.A17472@scientia.demon.co.uk> References: <19981213211314.57505@welearn.com.au> <19981213145942.D10841@scientia.demon.co.uk> <19981214070131.32240@welearn.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95i In-Reply-To: <19981214070131.32240@welearn.com.au> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Sue Blake wrote: > Thanks Ben, it sounds like you're on the right track here even though > I understand ver little of what you've said. Could you translate some > of it into "do this" style? > > I get that 'limits' is a command I can type, and it comes back with > maxprocesses-cur 64 What does $ sysctl kern.maxproc show? That's the system wide limit, which may be higher than your user limit. I'm guessing that while you're running X you could easily get 64 processes. (`ps ax | wc -l' will tell you how many procs you have, near enough anyway.) If kern.maxproc is a lot higher than 64, you can probably just alter some settings in /etc/login.conf to increase the per-user limits (following the instructions at the top of login.conf about rebuilding the database). To find out which class you are in, do `limits -U sue', or something: $ limits -U ben Resource limits for class staff: shows I'm in the `staff' class. You can change your class if needed using vipw, it's the fifth field along (which may well be blank, and can safely be left blank). If kern.maxproc isn't much higher, rebuild your kernel, replacing the maxusers line in the kernel config file with maxusers 64 or some such value. Reboot, check kern.maxproc and your limits, and see if things are working better. -- Ben Smithurst ben@scientia.demon.co.uk send a blank message to ben+pgp@scientia.demon.co.uk for PGP key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message