[Samba] Too many smbd processes?

[Maarten Buiter]

Hello People,

/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb status yields the following output:

smbd (pid 31224 31209 31102 31098 31077 31069 31056 3237 3171 3154 3147 
3144 3131 3129 3128 3124 3119 3091 3077 2590 2582 2564 2491 2468 1964) 
is running...
nmbd (pid 31062 31061) is running...

In total 25 smbd's and 2 nmbd's, while only five or six users actually 
use the samba-server.

This many processes causes my system to have a load around 19 to 25, 
which prevent
my sendmail from sending mail.

Does anybody know if this is normal samba behaviour? Restarting Samba 
doesn't seem
to limit the number of servers.

Kind regards,

Maarten