login: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable - how can i fix this?

This seems to have returned. I'm having

"-bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable" when I open up the terminal on my 10.4.6 system. The only way to remedy this issue seems to restart which is at minimum annoying. The other odd thing is when this occurs and if I open up the system preferences I can not interact with the GUI interface until I close the terminal. All the preferences are greyed out.

Sorry this was on a Client rather than a server didn't notice since I came across this through google.

I'm glad it's working for you, but am not convinced that the firewall was the problem.

The error message you got means that the server didn't have enough resources to process your login. This could be insufficient RAM, disk space or, more likely process space. If the server is very busy and has lots of processes running it can't fork a new process for your login.

Problems like that are usually transient - trying again a few minutes later may work since some processes have finished and have freed up process space.

You should look at what's running on the server and take whatever steps you think appropriate to reduce the number of processes running.

Actually I've found it's nothing to do with the firewall instead a limitation on the number of process that can run. Seems like 10.4 has a hard code of 100 process. With multiple apps, os apps, os files, dashboard widgets etc. it can easily jump over 100 process.

Ahh, I do believe that's what I said. 🙂

The default number of processes per user is 100 (1000 on Mac OS X Server), but this can be changed via sysctl:

sudo sysctl -w kern.maxprocperuid=500

Be aware that there are implications of raising the number too high.