usdsop cannot create a new process

[Dave Chamberlin]

I am applying a long running oracle patchset on a k460 w/2.5G RAM, HPUX 11.00. Some jobs are giving error: usdsop cannot create a new process. This patch has been running for days, but the system load has not been high - there are only about 150 processes running on the box. I cannot run SAM - gives: OBAM INTERNAL ERROR: cannot fork: not enough space. Top indicates I have 230M memory. A swapinfo shows only 5% used. Can someone tell me what is going on here?

[Mark Grant]

Sounds to me like there isn't enough swap to preallocate for new processes. Try adding some more swap, even file swap will do, just to see if the problem goes away.

[VikramAdmin]

Try out couple of checks:
1. Clean up all the processes used by the current user and do a fresh start.
2. Check whether the kernel is configured for multiple workers. (Since you are applying some oracle patchset, i guess it runs in parallel workers)
3. If both the above is going fine, HPUX, there must be some caching issue in the system, which is easier to tackle by a reboot of the box, alternatively you would need to play about with admin tools to see if you can identify if there are any processes that are still "trapping" resources.