bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable

[Alex Withers <awithers@gonzaga.edu>]

Hello, I've recently installed Debian 3.0 on a home machine.  After
logging into the machine through xdm I open an xterm with no trouble but
when I try to spawn another xterm it hangs for a few seconds before
spitting out the message: "bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable".
The same thing happens when I run the command "which".  As root this
problem does not occur.  After checking the system with "free" and "top",
nothing out of the ordinary and "ulimit -a" gives me the following:


core file size        (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size         (kbytes, -d) unlimited
file size             (blocks, -f) unlimited
max locked memory     (kbytes, -l) unlimited
max memory size       (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                    (-n) 1024
pipe size          (512 bytes, -p) 8
stack size            (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time             (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes            (-u) 256
virtual memory        (kbytes, -v) unlimited


I've checked various mailing list archives and they mention running
"ulimit -a" without much help beyond that.  I appear to be within my
limits but I am not sure as to how I would change these values such that
they take affect for all users.

Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.  Thanks,


Alex