(v)forking problems

[rich cannnings <rich@cannings.org>]

I routinely recieve fork(2) and vfork(2) errors while running 
various operations, receive errors such as:

	/bin/sh: cannot fork - try again

My system is *not* under severe load during these times. What must 
I change to allow more forking? Must a call something with sysctl? 
ulimit?

I'm currently using out of the box -current (a few days old) with a
GENERIC kernel. 

BTW: please reply to my email address too, since I'm not subscribed to 
misc@.