BPXP005I A FORK OR SPAWN ERROR WAS ENCOUNTERED during Zowe startup

Products

• Brightside

Issue/Introduction

During startup of Zowe started task ZWESLSTC, the below message shows up several times in JESMSGLG

BPXP005I A FORK OR SPAWN ERROR WAS ENCOUNTERED.  RETURN CODE 00000070 REASON CODE 0B250012

Also, logs show groups of messages similar to the sample below for different components

 2024-08-22 09:43:13.350 <ZWELNCH:84018024> ZWESVUSR INFO ZWEL0001I component caching-service started
 TypeError: fork error
     at exec (native)
     at execErrSync (/u/zowe/zowe-smpe/bin/libs/shell:71)
     at validateJavaHome (/u/zowe/zowe-smpe/bin/libs/java:82)
     at shellReadYamlJavaHome (/u/zowe/zowe-smpe/bin/libs/java:29)
     at requireJava (/u/zowe/zowe-smpe/bin/libs/java:56)
     at execute (/u/zowe/zowe-smpe/bin/commands/internal/start/component/index:27)
     at <anonymous> (/u/zowe/zowe-smpe/bin/commands/internal/start/component/cli.js:13)
 2024-08-22 09:43:21.362 <ZWELNCH:84018024> ZWESVUSR INFO ZWEL0004I component caching-service(84017552) terminated, status = 0
 2024-08-22 09:43:21.362 <ZWELNCH:84018024> ZWESVUSR INFO ZWEL0005I next attempt to restart component caching-service in 1 seconds
 2024-08-22 09:43:22.375 <ZWELNCH:84018024> ZWESVUSR ERROR ZWEL0049E failed to restart component caching-service

Cause

Unix return code  00000070 maps to EAGAIN (the resource is temporarily unavailable)

Unix reason code 0B250012 maps to JRMaxChild (the maximum number of processes for this user ID has been exceeded)

Resolution

This is an issue with the limit for Unix processes which are allowed for the ID assigned to the started task.

The limit needs to be increased in order to allow all the processes required by Zowe to start. It may be set at different places:

• As a system-wide default in BPXPRMxx member in SYS1.PARMLIB library, parameter MAXPROCUSER
• In the OMVS segment from the RACF definition for the userid, in parameter PROCUSER
• Depending on system settings, RACF may assign a default OMVS segment if the user definition doesn't have one of its own