Answer by Adam Eberlin for Mac os x 10.7.4 process limit

I was experiencing the same behavior on 10.6.8, so I gave the solution from this post a shot.

Create the following files if they don't exist, and then add/modify the following lines. (paraphrased)

sudo vim /etc/launchd.conf

limit maxproc 512 2048limit maxfiles 512 unlimited

sudo vim /etc/sysctl.conf

# Turn up maxprockern.maxproc=2048# Turn up the maxproc per userkern.maxprocperuid=1024# Remove core fileskern.coredump=0

Worked perfectly for me. I expect it should also work on more recent versions of OS X, as well.

Cheers