samba/smbfs problem

[Robert P. Goldman]

I've been trying to work with a number of directories samba mounted
onto a linux box (2.2.18-pre15 kernel on top of a RH 6.1 install), and 
am having a lot of trouble, particularly when using (x)emacs, on files 
in samba-mounted directory.

The problem is that I frequently get errors that claim that there are
too many files open.  

I don't see any evidence that this is, in fact, the case, and when I
tried to change the number of files allowed to be open on my system,
it had no effect.  I can think of two possibilities:

1.  Something about either emacs or about the way I'm mounting
directories is causing me to actually have way too many files open.  I 
don't believe that this is correct, since I see the following in 
/proc/sys/fs/file-nr:
1408	83	4096

I don't actually know what is the format of this "file," but my guess
is that I have 1408 files open and have a maximum of 4096.  I'm pretty 
sure about that being the maximum.  
more /proc/sys/fs/file-max 
4096

and when I increase the value in file-max to 8192, that third column
goes up while the first two remain unchanged...

The maximum number of inodes seems to be plenty, too. 

2.  The other alternative is that there's something funny about smbfs
and the way it mounts.  Any ideas?

Many thanks,
Robert