Problem logging user on

[Andrew Crowe_1]

Hello,

A user is having a problem logging on. They are getting this message:

Please wait...checking for disk quotas
could not execute quota command
/etc/profile[31]: cannot fork: too many processes
/etc/profile[48]: cannot fork: too many processes
/etc/profile[83]: cannot fork: too many processes
${HOME:-.}/.profile[11]: cannot fork: too many processes
${HOME:-.}/.profile[13]: cannot fork: too many processes

When I first logged in as root /home was 100% full and I cleared some space and it is now 42%.
This looks like it is having trouble opening /etc/profile at login.

Any help would be gratefully accepted.

Regards

Andrew

[Stefan Farrelly · Accepted solution]

Youve either hit one of 3 problems;

1. Youre out of swapspace. Do a swapinfo -mt command, how USED is swap ? If really high (50%+) you need to add some more.

2. Youve hit one of 2 kernel parameters, nproc (max processes) or maxuprc (max user processes). Do a ps -e|wc -l to see how many processes running and compare with sysdef | grep nproc, if theyre similar you need to increase nproc. Then check maxuprc (sysdef | grep maxuprc) and for the user getting the error do a ps -fu | wc -l and compare. If similar increase maxuprc

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,
if you get "cannot fork: too many processes" it means (probably) that your nproc kernel parameter is set too low, in other words you have reached the limit of system wide processes.
Other possibilities are:
- "maxuprc" kernel parameters : maximum number of processes per user
- one process stuck in a loop a starting new processes over and over again, until nproc is reached.

You can check nproc with "sar -v 1 1" and can change it through SAM, will need a reboot though.

good luck,
Thierry.

[Andrew Crowe_1]

Thank You very much. It was the maxurpc. I will extend it.

Thanks again

Andrew