[plug] dpkg error

[Russell Steicke]

Any debian guru know how to fix this?...

russells at bobby:~$ sudo apt-get install dpkg
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
1 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 669  not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/1073kB of archives. After unpacking 213kB will be freed.
sh: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
sh: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
FATAL -> Failed to fork.
dpkg-deb: fork failed: Resource temporarily unavailable
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.9.21_i386.deb 
(--unpack):
 subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.9.21_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
russells at bobby:~$ 

The currently installed dpkg is 1.9.4.  google and search.debian.org 
didn't turn up anything promising.

The machine has plenty of free memory, and nothing else is saying that it 
can't fork.

The same error occurs when apt-getting anything, or using dpkg -i on any
.deb.  The debs I am trying to install are the correct size (or at least
the same size as on a machine without this error.)

Help?