Bug 1127 - fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
Summary: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: Portable OpenSSH
Classification: Unclassified
Component: sshd (show other bugs)
Version: 4.2p1
Hardware: Other All
: P1 major
Assignee: Assigned to nobody
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2005-11-29 05:23 AEDT by Avinash
Modified: 2008-11-04 06:58 AEDT (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Avinash 2005-11-29 05:23:56 AEDT
We have a production running openssh using 3.8.1p1 openssh version. I had noticed by "googling" that this issue was also present in 4.2p1. We have noticed that many times the ssh server complains in the Event Viewer log as follows:
Fork: Resource temporarily unavailable.

This issue goes away (atleast for sometime) when the service is restarted. We have many systems in production already using this service and this could be a potential issue for us.

I have not noticed any issue with memory consumption whatsoever on the machine.

I have attached the log from the event viewer:

Event Type:	Error
Event Source:	sshd
Event Category:	None
Event ID:	0
Date:		8/17/2005
Time:		2:35:40 PM
User:		NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer:	400T-0940881
Description:
The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( sshd ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. The following information is part of the event: sshd : PID 836 : error: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable.
Comment 1 Darren Tucker 2005-12-14 00:41:01 AEDT
It might not be memory, it might be some other limit (eg processes).  How many processes do you have running (not just sshd's) when you see the failure?

I don't know how Cygwin's ulimits interact with whatever Windows does natively, but "ulimit -a" gives me a "max user processes" limit of 63.

Comment 2 Damien Miller 2007-05-17 22:59:24 AEST
18 months and no response = no bug
Comment 3 Damien Miller 2008-04-04 09:55:18 AEDT
Close resolved bugs after release.
Comment 4 michel.reverbel.abos 2008-11-04 06:58:17 AEDT
The bug is still here. I have the very same problem. I use the latest version.

Fortunately someone found out the bug context : http://erdelynet.com/archive/ssh-l/2005-05/3183.html

The bug is linked to the use of the "memory overflow" of McAfee antivirus.