use of ram up to 100% with redhat enterprise

hello all,

i'm currently having strange problem with my linux redhat server.
when i connect to it, and i tape in some shell commands to administrate
it, the process suddenly forks in thounsands (yes thousands) childs and
the server freeze.
i can sometimes get it back but it often need to be rebooted.

for example:
i taped in a 'less' command to see a log file, then it started to
freeze, but in another shell i managed to do a 'ps -axf' > ps.txt and
send it to another machine.
so reading that ps.txt file i noticed that the process had forked 2650
times!!!
of course it freeze!!!

it's not only the 'less' command that can freeze the machine, but also
randomly any other command.
i'm going to do a 'memtest' on the machine, but i'm not sure it's the
problem.

that machine worked for months without problem, it brooke suddenly few
days ago.
no msg errors in logs.
only sometimes the "no memory to fork" (something like that) msg in
console.
i suspected a rootkit but that machine is really well protected behind
routeur and firewall.

does someone have any idea, suggestion for me?
thanks by advance
skylupo

---the machine is:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 3 (Taroon)
Linux 2.4.21-4.ELsmp
ram 2Go
swap 4Go

.

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