I'm having trouble reproducing this. I started a few thousand /bin/sleep commands and was able to log in via ssh as another user; the error message when logging in again as my normal user account showed an error message that looked appropriate.
In one ssh: sarnold@sec-xenial-amd64:~$ for i in `seq 1 6000` ; do /bin/sleep 10 & done ... [15813] 24043 [15814] 24044 [15815] 24045 -bash: fork: retry: Resource temporarily unavailable -bash: fork: retry: Resource temporarily unavailable In another terminal: $ ssh -oControlPath=none root@sec-xenial-amd64 Welcome to Ubuntu Xenial Xerus (development branch) (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-16-generic x86_64) * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/ 0 packages can be updated. 0 updates are security updates. Last login: Thu Mar 31 15:42:23 2016 from 192.168.122.1 root@sec-xenial-amd64:~# $ ssh -oControlPath=none sec-xenial-amd64 shell request failed on channel 0 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Server Team, which is subscribed to openssh in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1564451 Title: User processes are counted towards systemd limit for sshd processes To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssh/+bug/1564451/+subscriptions -- Ubuntu-server-bugs mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server-bugs
