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Unable to fork new process in Linux/Unix (2007790)
Symptoms
Unable to fork new process in Linux/Unix
The error log contains the error:
[error] (12)Not enough space: fork: Unable to fork new process
The server is unable to handle additional connections
Cause
This issue occurs when the system has run out of file handles, which prevents the httpd process from creating the necessary number of processes if you are using the prefork MPM.
Resolution
To resolve this issue, increase the number of file descriptors available to httpd.
To check the number of hard and soft file descriptors available on the system, run the command:
ulimit -n
To increase the number of file descriptors available to httpd, run the command:
ulimit -n <number>
Where <number> is the number of file descriptors available to httpd
For examnple:
ulimit -n 2048
Contact your operating system provider for more information about file descriptors and the ulimit command.
Note: This command can be added to a system startup file or the apache_startup.sh script for the affected instance.
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