While executing commands from a non root user i get "Fork: Resource temporarily unavailable" very frequently. System has excessive Free memory. This a new bash session and no processes are running from this bash session. Below is the limits.conf

* soft nproc 2047
* hard nproc 16384
* soft nofile 1024
* hard nofile 65536

ulimit -a

core file size (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority (-e) 0
file size (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals (-i) 278528
max locked memory (kbytes, -l) 32
max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files (-n) 1024
pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority (-r) 0
stack size (kbytes, -s) 10240
cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes (-u) 2047
virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks (-x) unlimited

If there is much free memory, I think, that the max. process count may be reached (see fork(2) for details). How many processes are running?

Just wanna know nproc limit set in limits.conf, does it enforce a limit on all user sessions or a single session. I mean if nproc is set to 256, then user can run 256 processes in a single session or it applies to all combined sessions ? As in man page for limits.conf author says "(Also, please note that all limit settings are set per login. They are not global, nor are they permanent;existing only for the duration of the session.)" so I thought it applies to a single login session not combined login sessions of a single user.