[Samba] Too many open files error. Help!!!

[Gary MacKay]

have a 3.0.24 system running on CentOS 4.4 with all the latest patches 
and upgrades. However this problem started several samba versions ago 
and upgrading up to 3.0.24 has not helped. I have Googled for hours and 
found lots of the same request to absolutely no responses or help. 
Please, if anyone can shed some light on this???

Setup:
The system is setup as the PDC and sharing the typical home, public, 
sys, folders. I am using tdbsam backend. Login scripts map the drives 
for each user when they login. There are only 25 workstations. Mostly XP 
Pro, 4 or 5 Win2k boxes and I believe 1 Win98 box left. There is also a 
Windows 2K server that is just a domain member server running MS SQL. 
That is all.

Symptoms:
Everything runs fine for awhile (sometimes weeks, and sometimes only a 
day or two) and then all of a sudden, nobody can connect. They can all 
login fine, but can not access any of the shares. The error messages in 
the /var/log/samba/xxxx.log files all show "too many files open". I just 
log everyone out, stop and start samba, and everyone logs back in just 
fine. I do not even have to reboot the box. Tho I have tried that and it 
made to difference in how long it lasts before breaking again.

- Gary