Like some I would guess who bother to try and build -current, I
think I've seen at least one person "hint" at the existing problem
that is plaguing -current on NetBSD/vax the past few months.

I've not seen anyone actually discuss it so I'll document what I
am seeing.  This has gone on since July I think.

I was able to build as far as descending into src/sys and after 21
hours on a 4k/90A so this is clearly a tough one to debug.

At the moment I can clearly reproduce it, but this seems like an
erratic bug as it sometimes occurs elsewhere I think.

Anyway, after a minor tweak to src/usr.bin/make to actually provide
an honest error message, here is what I see under usr/src/sys:

# make cleandir
cleandir ===> adosfs
cleandir ===> altq
cleandir ===> arch
cleandir ===> arch/vax
cleandir ===> arch/vax/include
cleandir ===> arch/vax/boot
cleandir ===> arch/vax/boot/boot
cleaning the sa library objects
rm -f a.out [Ee]rrs mklog core *.core  
make: Could not fork: Cannot allocate memory

make: stopped in /usr/obj/sys/arch/vax/boot/boot/lib/sa
*** Error code 2

Stop.
make: stopped in /usr/src/sys/arch/vax/boot/boot
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make: stopped in /usr/src/sys/arch/vax/boot
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make: stopped in /usr/src/sys/arch/vax
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make: stopped in /usr/src/sys/arch
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make: stopped in /usr/src/sys

If I descend down to /usr/src/sys/arch/vax/boot then I
can actually "make", somewhat... it is as if the parent
copies of make as it forks are triggering the problem
if you have a long enough process chain...

Cheers,

-- Ken