fork: Cannot allocate memory

Question

I am frequently getting:

fork: Cannot allocate memory

when running commands over ssh. I have 4 GB of RAM and usually 2 GB free. This started happening since I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10.

I then need to repeatably run the command until it finishes successfully.

I'm connecting from my laptop to my server both from my home LAN. Some times happens even when I run apt-get.

Any idea why?

Solution

Can you provide us with the output of ulimit -a ran in a session where this happens?

/etc/pam.d/sshd should involve pam_limits.so when you open a session. This module will use /etc/security/limits.conf to apply various restrictions to your session, including regarding memory usage.

Comments

[lumbric]

I think you have to provide more details otherwise this won't be solveable. I suppose the machine you are describing is the ssh server you are connecting to? (and not the client) When this happens run free and post the output here (and what program caused the error)

[Panther]

Are you running in a VPS ?

[xrado]

I'm connecting from my laptop to my server both in home lan. Some times happens even when I run apt-get. I'll check free next time.

[DivinesLight]

I am getting exactly same problem, also lots of others. See this: ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11649751

[J. Starnes]

Welcome to askubuntu. You could improve your answer by including an example command to enable swap. From review.