> 
> On my 233MHz Alpha when I log in I automatically get about 30 xterms,
> Netscape, Gnumeric, etc. The problem I'm seeing is that sometimes bash
> (in an xterm) complains that it can't fork because it got EAGAIN.  I'm
> not hitting my per-user process limit I don't think -- This minute I
> have 58 processes running, with the limit set to 1044. My memory use
> is unlimited, I have 64MB of memory, and I have a half gig or so of
> swap. 
> 
> What's up? Is this fork() running into some transient limitation? If
> so, can fork() wait a amount of time and then try again? 
>
Your window manager or whatever starts your window may have a 64-proc
limitation; if it starts from xdm it won't have run any dot-scripts.
You can check it by doing "sysctl proc.17339.rlimit.maxproc.soft"
substituting 17339 for the pid of your window manager.

-- Ragge