>Date: Sat, 22 Jan 94 17:26 EST
>From: Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com>
>
>When I run my normal X setup, with several clients at once, some from the
>net, and including a changing background picture frob going all the time
>(at nice -20) so the X server never sits still, after a short time of use
>(before today's kernel it happened immediately) I can do X things and type
>into my xterms, but the shells seem not to be able to fork; I can keep
>using my emacs until it tries to fork a subprocess, at which point it
>wedges completely.

Sounds like you're running out of process table entries to me.  Try
increasing 'maxusers' in your kernel config (A good idea for X users
anyway).  You may also want to make sure that you have enough ptys.
-- 
Mike Long                                         Mike.Long@Analog.com
VLSI Design Engineer                              voice: (617)461-4030
Analog Devices, SPD Div.                            FAX: (617)461-3010
Norwood, MA 02062                            *this = !opinion(Analog);

------------------------------------------------------------------------------