fork: retry: Resource temporarily unavailable

I got this error on webfaction. Seems it was do to too many open files (file descriptors). Edit: Which is not really my fault, since I’m on a shared server… which is mostly because I’m cheap. So it IS kind of my fault. Anyhow..

How do I check max allow amounts of file descriptors?

ulimit -Hn

How do I check the number of current file descriptors?

sudo lsof -u <username> 2>/dev/null | wc -l

or

lsof 2>/dev/null | wc -l

The latter showing my current user’s number of file descriptors. If my current amount of FD is greater than my allowed number of FD, I have to kill some of my processes.

How do I find my currently running processses?

lsof -i

This will show a list where PID (Process ID) is a column

How do I find FD belonging to a PID (Process ID)?

lsof | grep 123456

123456 being the process ID. This will show some addition information which should allow you to indentify what the process is actually running.

How do I kill processes?

kill -9 123456

123456 being the process ID.

How do I fix fork: retry: Resource temporarily unavailable?

Do the above steps. source: stackoverflow, the greatest webpage of all time