The OSX kernel has a process table of a fixed size, and each process occupies one slot in the process table. The error "fork: Resource temporarily unavailable" is returned when OSX runs out of slots for new processes. The fix for this problem is to increase the number of slots included in the process table. This is done by adding a line like:
limit maxproc 512 2048
to the
/etc/launchd.conf
file (create it if it doesn't already exist). This sets the
soft limit to
512
(the default is
100
) and it sets the
hard limit to
2048
(the default is
532
). After you make this change, you must reboot for it to take effect. Until you reboot, the only thing you can do is quit some of your applications to free up process slots in the table.
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DarrellSchiebel - 11 Jul 2006