HELP PLEASE!!!!!

[bignester]

-bash: fork: Resource temporily unavailable

what in gods name does this mean

this is an older computer 233 mghz
32 megs of ram
6 gig hardrive

this problem only started recently after i setupo my samba wins server on it

does anybody know what this means

[Dolda2000]

It means that the maximum allowed number of processes on the system are used currently in use, and therefore no new one can be created for the forking. I think the usual number is 512 or something around that. It could either be that you're cracked with a fork bomb, or that some process is running amok due to a bug (this has happened for me a couple of times with an older version of ypserv), or simply that a program forks for a good reason, but forgets to wait for the zombie processes, which can also tie up all processes. Try to get access and run ps to see what is happening. One good reason could be to always have top running, and then when it becomes like this you can check with top what process is doing it.