MAXPROCSYS

MAXPROCSYS specifies the maximum number of processes that can be active at the same time.

You can manage system resources by limiting the number of processes that the system is to support. The values that you specify for MAXPROCSYS, MAXPROCUSER, and MAXUIDS are interrelated. When selecting a value for MAXPROCSYS, remember that these processes are needed:

The initialization process (BPXOINIT)
/usr/sbin/init, for starting and processing
exec sh to run a shell script
The process in which the shell script runs

Plan on one process for each daemon (for example, inetd and cron) that you start from a shell script such as /etc/rc. In addition, each shell user needs a minimum of three processes and possibly a few more for piping between shell commands.

Do not specify a higher value for MAXPROCSYS than your system can support because most processes use an entire MVS™ address space. This value will vary, depending on your environment. If you set the value too high, failures (EAGAIN) for fork or spawn might occur because WLM could not provide enough fork initiators.

Dynamically changing certain BPXPRMxx parameter values explains how to dynamically change the MAXPROCSYS value.

For an example of MAXPROCSYS settings in BPXPRMxx, see Monitoring use of system resources.