limit for number of processes in an Xfce session?

[Peter Tribble]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all
> I seem to have found a sweet bug in Xfce. It seems that Xfce is unable
> to launch any program if there already exist 400 processes in the
> session.
>
> Currently I have 400 processes (as indicated by the task manager), and
> launching any programme from the panel or menu will fail silently. If
> I try to launch from a terminal I get a message similar to this:
> root at liv-laptop:/home/liv/tmp/wd_my_passport# Thunar
> Maximum number of clients reachedThunar: Cannot open display:
> root at liv-laptop:/home/liv/tmp/wd_my_passport# winff
> Maximum number of clients reached
> (winff:30903): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0
>
> Is this an Xfce or X limitation?

That's X. Any X server will only support a limited number of
connections. (It's not a process limit, although clearly running
more processes will result in more connections.)

The xlsclients command will list the client applications, which
will help you work out if you've just got too many applications
running, or whether something has run amok and grabbed too
many connections. Of course, you'll need to close something
down to free a slot and allow xlsclients to connect.

-- 
-Peter Tribble
http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/