bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory

[fabben]

Hello everybody!

Since I upgraded to 11.10 (upgraded when it was beta) I sometimes get this error messages then I using the tab function i bash:

bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory

I have a lot of memory left (626 MB + almost 8 GB i SWAP).

It never happened before I upgraded, and I've been hoping that this should disappear in lates upgrades, but after some month the problem is still here.

$ uname -a
Linux klisterburk 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7 14:50:42 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 4.2.10(1)-release (i686-pc-linux-gnu)

Does somebody know how I can solve this?

[fabben]

Hello again!

I also sometimes get this error then I'm doing others command.

Example:

$ rm -rf some_dir
bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
$ rm -rf some_dir
$

The second time it worked.

[Wayne_V]

what is the output of 'free -m' ?

[fabben]

what is the output of 'free -m' ?

$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3273 2871 402 0 14 648
-/+ buffers/cache: 2208 1065
Swap: 9624 30 9594
$

[fabben]

Yesterday I upgraded kernel to "3.0.0-13-generic #22-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 2 13:25:36 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux", but today I got this:

$ screen -S alpine
bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
$

(And the second time I run it it was no problem, as usual).

[fabben]

I still has this problems and have no clue how to solve it.

I also has big problem with my graphic drivers. 2 times of 3 when I reboot my machine, it totally crash when I start firefox. (I must press reset button, because X disappear and the screen shows only graphical junk).

Firefox hangs quite often also.

I think this problems are connected, because I didn't had any of it before.

I have run memory check on the machine for several hours, but it says that everything is okey.

[fabben]

No one has a clue how I can solve this? Is there any program/script that can search for broken things in the system?

Today I found I had a mail.err file i /var/log. It had 3 lines:

Dec 12 10:11:26 fabbes spamc[13282]: fork failed: Cannot allocate memory
Dec 12 16:40:51 fabbes spamc[13725]: fork failed: Cannot allocate memory
Dec 13 22:17:52 fabbes spamc[366]: fork failed: Cannot allocate memory

[imblack]

I am also getting this same friken error sometimes :/

[fabben]

I have now, on a new disk, installed a totally new system from scratch. I tought the problem should be gone, but no!

After a while, maybe after I installed the samba-package(?), the problem returned. I did not had this problem before I installed 11.10. I just did "ls" some times, and this is what happened:

fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls

[BJCV86]

I have now, on a new disk, installed a totally new system from scratch. I tought the problem should be gone, but no!

After a while, maybe after I installed the samba-package(?), the problem returned. I did not had this problem before I installed 11.10. I just did "ls" some times, and this is what happened:

fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls
filmdisk old
fabbe@fabbe:/media$ ls

Ok what i'm thinking is this question. What is your motherboard? I'm not a professional at all. I am using a socket 468? 3Ghz Dual thing. What is your socket? And RAM Specs? Not the amount, the company brand and speed. I mention this because specific communicative wavelength and light pulses of which I know of physics and different metal materials do actually permission the software, or deny of it. It's weird how I say it. But how they build it, and what 11.10 has included to understand the elemental properties of hardware. yada yada. New system you say? Ok I can think a question to ask about that. The question is: What socket did you use? And what ram? lol BEEECAUSE. I could be full of crap. But I had an issue. And I got rid of it because I had to stop buying mother boards that didn't support the new'polished implementations for specific things that all these things. I dunno. I thought I would ask. All I know, i had an issue with too much wrong ram. and just enough right ram. but if a ubuntu pro knows the computer science language impressively. Than i'm sure they would have an idea to quickly advance the Ubuntu further based on ur experiances. i hit my head too many times, however u say it. oh and how the software on the disk, communicates with the bios. I dunno I tried.