intermittent "operation not permitted"?

[Nicholas Murphy]

If I'm seeing intermittent (not consistent) "operation not permitted" errors when trying to start a script, what is a likely cause of that?  Could it be, perhaps, that there isn't enough memory to load the kernel module?

I see things like this:
Error inserting module '/scratch/tmp/stapHHzQ11/stap_25086.ko': Operation not permitted
Error, 'stap_25086' is not a zombie systemtap module.
Retrying, after attempted removal of module stap_25086 (rc -5)
Error inserting module '/scratch/tmp/stapHHzQ11/stap_25086.ko': Operation not permitted
Pass 5: run failed.  Try again with another '--vp 00001' option.

Thanks,
Nick