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Starting and stopping the system

Fork failed... Resource temporarily unavailable

If you see this message displayed on the console:

   Fork failed: Command[scoterm]System Error was: Resource temporarily unavailable
This message is usually caused by running out of virtual memory and can be easily remedied by adding more swap space. This must be done while in multiuser mode. When executed as root, these commands add approximately 30MB of virtual memory:

touch /swap
swap -a /swap 0 60000

The /swap file will only grow according to the actual swap requirements and may not actually consume 30MB of disk space. To avoid reissuing this command every time the system is rebooted, simply add the above commands to the /etc/rc.d/8/userdef file.

Virtual memory is tracked via the kernel variable availsmem, which tracks the available virtual memory in 4K pages. This variable is handled conservatively, and normally reserves more swap space than will actually be needed. Programs that use shared libraries will decrement availsmem. Programs that use the mmap(S) facility and map privately also require a large reserve of virtual memory.

To monitor availsmem, use the crash(ADM) utility:

   # crash
   dumpfile = /dev/mem, namelist = /unix, outfile = stdout
   > od -d availsmem
   f0175120:  0000011682
   > q
In this example, the value ``0000011682'' translates to 11,682 4K pages, or approximately 45.63 MB.
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© 2003 Caldera International, Inc. All rights reserved.
SCO OpenServer Release 5.0.7 -- 11 February 2003