bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable

[linuxnewbie]

&bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable&

a client (only this 1 guy) gets this message once he is logged in via ssh and tries to run any command.

ex: he types &ls& and he gets the above message

anybody know whats wrong or how to fix this?

thanks

[mesranet]

Login to WebHostManager - Shell Fork Bomb Protection - Disable it

[Ronny]

Well I'd like to have that protection on..... why would it display such a message if the client hasn't done anything? I mean an ls isn't going to cause a fork bomb

[myusername]

I have the same problem for a user, and also would like to maintain that protection.

[alareach]

Any further info on this? Just happened to one of our very long running & stable boxes. Got an email that

/bin/sh: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable

....services started failing, and now can't get into ssh or whm to reboot.

[Nico]

Originally posted by linuxnewbie
&bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable&

a client (only this 1 guy) gets this message once he is logged in via ssh and tries to run any command.

ex: he types &ls& and he gets the above message

anybody know whats wrong or how to fix this?

thanks

I had this same problem this AM I corrected it like this:
SSH in as root
ps -aux |grep username
(replace username with the user getting this error) You should see all the processes they have running. If you kill those off they can log in afterwards.

[DARKMAN]

i'm having same problems.
Disable fork bomb protection is not an option and killing processes also!

Any solutions?

[cornernote]

Hello,

Is there a way to increase the number of processes that a user is allowed to run?

Brett

[chirpy]

Edit /etc/profile and make an exception for the user that you want to change the value for.

[cornernote]

Hello Chirpy,

I looked at the file but because I don't understand it 100% and I dont want to break it I did not change anything. Would you be able to tell me what I should change?

I tried changing this:

if [ "$LIMITUSER" != "root" ]; then
        ulimit -n 100 -u 20 -m 200000 -d 200000 -s 8192 -c 200000 -v 200000 2>/dev/null
else
        ulimit -n 4096 -u 14335 -m unlimited -d unlimited -s 8192 -c 1000000 -v unlimited 2>/dev/null
fi

To This:

if [ "$LIMITUSER" == "root" ]; then
        ulimit -n 4096 -u 14335 -m unlimited -d unlimited -s 8192 -c 1000000 -v unlimited 2>/dev/null
else if [ "$LIMITUSER" == "fasthost" ]; then
        ulimit -n 500 -u 100 -m 1000000 -d 1000000 -s 8192 -c 1000000 -v 1000000 2>/dev/null
else
        ulimit -n 100 -u 20 -m 200000 -d 200000 -s 8192 -c 200000 -v 200000 2>/dev/null
fi

But this results in:
bash: /etc/profile: line 68: syntax error: unexpected end of file



Best regards,
Brett

[cornernote]

I changed "else if" to "elif" and it worked. Go figure

[cornernote]

Even if I give my account the same settings as root, it still does the same thing. Yet when I log in as root and "sh" to my user, it works fine.

Brett

[chirpy]

Looks like you may need to make the change in a few other files, though I don't know which take precedence:

/etc/profile
/etc/bashrc
/etc/profile.d/limits.sh

I cannot say that I've ever tried playing with it, though

[Norman]

FWIW.. I found this with a user.. who when we enabled Fork Bomb Protection, when using IMAP with alot of email accounts would not be able to login via shell.

If you do a "ps -ef | grep <username>" and see a bunch of imapd .. that's one of the reasons.

Just my 2cents worth.

[Devil Inside]

I made the changes that were mentioned in this thread - however, I'm still getting the "line 70: syntax error: unexpected end of file" error after changing "else if" to "elif"

Any ideas?