CYGWIN error: "Resource temporarily unavailable"

[madsic]

A couple of attempts at compiling under CYGWIN (my ubuntu install p.t. being dodo-like) keep resulting in the following error: At some seemingly random stage (random, that is, to me), it will come to a screeching halt, declaring that this or that "resource [is] temporarily unavailable", e.g. /bin/sed. I've never encountered this under linux and relevant comments are hard to google by. Anyone knows what this means/can be fixed? My pc isn't top of the line (1.6GHz celeron, 512 Mb RAM) but surely it's not a matter of running out of resources or something like that, is it?