Re: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable / cant start new threads

[Randy Dunlap]

mark wrote:
> On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Tue, 20 May 2008 11:26:47 -0700 mark wrote:
> > > I upgraded to 2.6.25.3-18.fc9.x86_64 fedora core 9, now I get this
> > > error when I try to login to the box, kill a pr start a python app, or
> > > do anything on a regular basis.
> > >
> > > fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
> > >
> > > I have over 10GB RAM free, and zero swap spaced used. The box is a
> > > dual quad core Intel Xeon 5405 with 16GB RAM.
> > >
> > > There is no error message in /var/log/messages or dmesg ...
> > > how do I identify the problem?
> > > thanks!
> > >
> > > uname -a
> > > Linux XXX 2.6.25.3-18.fc9.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue May 13 04:54:47 EDT 2008
> > > x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> > >
> > >
> > > free -m
> > >             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> > > Mem:         16086       3189      12896          0         42        666
> > > -/+ buffers/cache:       2481      13605
> > > Swap:         1983          0       1983
> > >
> > >
> > > have only 505 processes running
> > > ps aux | wc -l
> > > 505
> > >
> > >
> > > uptime
> > >  11:24:15 up 39 min,  1 user,  load average: 3.54, 3.47, 2.87
> > >
> > > ulimit -a
> > > core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
> > > data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
> > > scheduling priority             (-e) 0
> > > file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
> > > pending signals                 (-i) 137216
> > > max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 32
> > > max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
> > > open files                      (-n) 32768
> > > pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
> > > POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
> > > real-time priority              (-r) 0
> > > stack size              (kbytes, -s) 10240
> > > cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
> > > max user processes              (-u) 1024
> > > virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
> > > file locks                      (-x) unlimited
> > The only place that fork() returns EAGAIN is for number of
> > processes being >= its limit.  Does this user already have >= 1024
> > processes?
>
> No, it is around 400

Well, my comment was wrong anyway.  There are several other tests just
below number of user processes that also return EAGAIN, like:

- total number of threads being too large
- error on grabbing a module reference count (?)
- error on grabbing a binfmt module reference


> ps ax | wc -l
> 417
>
> I also I increased max process to unlimited, and I still get the error
> randomly..
>
> ulimit -u
> unlimited
>
> my webserver is now throwing this error:
>
> setuid(500) failed (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)

That's all of the useful information??

> cat /etc/passwd | grep mark
> mark:x:500:500::/home/mark:/bin/bash
>
> I also increased this, but still the same error
> kernel.pid_max =  65536


--
~Randy
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