"bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory" error

guarriman · 04-04-2007, 03:20 AM

Hi.

Working on Fedora Core 2 (kernel 2.6.9), I got this error message when accessing my machine via shell:
------
bash: /bin/egrep: Bad file descriptor
-bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
-------

What does it mean? How can I fix it?

I'm experiencing some shell problems (some commands won't work), and my memory status is:

Code:

-bash-2.05b# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          8101       8063         37          0        271       4405
-/+ buffers/cache:       3387       4714
Swap:         4094         75       4019

Thank you very much in advance

trickykid · 04-05-2007, 12:46 PM

I'd say it's a problem with egrep and not memory. Try reinstalling or upgrading the package egrep comes with.