when attempting to su to an application ID, get the following error message

su: cannot set user id: Resource temporarily unavailable

anyone know the root cause. in the past, rebooting the system has fixed it for a short period of time

You don't tell us what application ID you're trying to use, on what version/distro of Linux, what application(s) that server is running, in what environment. There's no way for us to even guess without any useful details.

Wild guess: check your ulimits.

Sorry Redhat 6.3 2.6.32-279.22.1.el6.x86_64 running on vmware attempting to su to a vtier account ID. the only application running on the server is Websphere WAS 8.5, Java is 1.7

on RHEL6 "sudo" is not normally set up
you have to do that if you want to use sudo to allow some people SOME of the root access to SOME programs

by default you use "su" and "su - "

1 members found this post helpful.

Ok...so as suggested, check your ulimits for that user. The user has probably reached their limit for max processes as specified in etc/security/limits.conf.

As root, these commands can give you a clue as to the the number of processes and of open files for the given user:

ps -U username | wc -l
lsof | grep username | wc -l

Again, to fix the issue, you have to increase the soft limit in the /etc/security/limits.conf file.


Also, you're using Red Hat Enterprise on VMware with Websphere...every piece is a commercial, pay-for product. Have you contacted Red Hat or IBM support, since you're paying for it?

1 members found this post helpful.