How to kill a process that has hit the nproc limit.

Solution Unverified - Updated -

Issue

  • What can I do to regain control of my computer when a process goes wild creating so many forks that I can't run any command?
  • Even a ps command to get the pid of the errant process fails.
  • What can I do short of rebooting?

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • ulimit

Subscriber exclusive content

A Red Hat subscription provides unlimited access to our knowledgebase, tools, and much more.

Current Customers and Partners

Log in for full access

Log In

New to Red Hat?

Learn more about Red Hat subscriptions

Using a Red Hat product through a public cloud?

How to access this content