Error: input: Resource temporarily unavailable

[Gustafson, Tim]

I am getting the following error in "vi" pretty consistently:

Error: input: Resource temporarily unavailable

Usually I get this at every attempt I make to run vi.  Every now and then
I'll somehow manage to stay in vi however long I want.  It seems that if
it's going to bomb, it bombs in the first 30 seconds of running the program.
Otherwise, it doesn't happen at all.

No other programs do this, as far as I know.

I have tried installing the nvi-devel port to see if maybe this is fixed in
a new version, but it does the exact same thing.  I even rebuilt the kernel
and world after a cvsup to make sure something wasn't broken, but that
didn't work wither.  I have tried switching shells from bash to just sh to
see if it's related somehow to bash, but that did not have any effect
either.

I am currently running FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE-p8 i386

This problem pops up about once a month and then seems to go away by itself
after a few days, but I would really like to know what is causing it.  I
have searched the FreeBSD mailing list archives and found a few references
to changing some flag in my shell, and I followed their instructions, but it
did not help.

Obviously, it is a real pain in the neck since I use vi exclusively and I
despise having to us pico for anything.

If anyone has any idea how I can fix this, I would really appreciate it.

Tim

Tim Gustafson
MEI Technology Consulting, Inc
tjg at meitech.com
(516) 379-0001 Office
(516) 480-1870 Mobile/Emergencies
http://www.meitech.com/