[tadd]

Received disconnect from XX.XX.XX.XX: fork failed: Resource temporarily unavailable

macmini:~ tadd$ man users
sh: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
Error executing formatting or display command.
System command (cd /usr/share/man && /usr/bin/tbl /usr/share/man/man1/users.1 | /usr/bin/groff -Wall -mtty-char -Tascii -mandoc -c | /usr/bin/less -is) exited with status 32768.
No manual entry for users
macmini:~ tadd$


I get fork failures on my mac mini. There seems to be a limit of how many threads I can run. I'm using SSH and SCREEN to log into my Mac Mini 10.4.9 (but also 10.4.8 before). I'm using the mini to run BZFLAG servers which launch from the command line and output logging information to standard out. I'm using SCREEN to shell to a new prompt, then capture the output using SCREEN's screenlog feature.

I have 11 shells running in screen to run the bzfs servers, and another 11 shells running bzadmin which is a text user interface item, on one of the log-ins. Other log ins are doing the same thing and there are perhaps 20 bzfs servers running total.

I end up with about 50 bash copies running according to ps -aux.

uptime shows: 10:35 up 23:42, 5 users, load averages: 0.70 0.77 0.69
System Memory in Activity Monitor shows 795MB used and 228MB free (1gig installed).

Is there any limit to the number of forks? Or shell sessions? per user? If so, can I change that limit? This is all my Mac Mini is doing but I'd like to do a lot more of them.

Perhaps there is a way to launch these command line applications while capturing stdout, without using so many threads?

Thanks for any help.
Tadd

[mfbernstein]

Play around with sysctl a bit. Something like 'sysctl -w kern.maxproc=1000' should work. The man pages have a fair bit to say on the topic.

[tadd]

Thanks mfbernstein. I got a confirm from somebody on #bzflag (freenode IRC) but that I also ahd to do a local change in my user bash-profile. So.. this is what I did:

sudo sysctl -w kern.maxprocperuid=256
cd ~
cat >> .bash_profile
ulimit -u 256
^D

the reboot.

The first command allows the computer to have 256 processes per user and the ulimit allows THAT user to have 256 processes.

I did this but haven't rebooted yet. Will try shortly.