2.1.21 on RH 9 and 'Too many open files'

["Brian K. Jones" <jonesy@CS.Princeton.EDU>]

Hi all. 

I'm running slapd (bdb backend) in debug mode (-d 127) and I'm finding
(in the course of fighting with client configs) that there seems to be
wild creation of 'new connections' in my slapd output, up to the point,
I guess of going over the fd limit in RH9.  If this activity seemed like
it was predictable, I'd just raise the RH9 limit on open files, but for
a single 'su' (on either a redhat or solaris client), I get a bunch of
relatively normal messages, and then about 1000 'new connections',
ending with a 'Too many open files' error. 

BTW - my directory is small - about 1000 user entries, and as I'm only
testing, I'm the only person who ever hits the directory. I'd hate to
see what would happen with 300 or so concurrent users. 

Is this normal? What's everyone using as a limit on their open files? 

daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: new connection on 1015
daemon: added 1015r
daemon: activity on:
daemon: select: listen=6 active_threads=0 tvp=NULL
daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: new connection on 1016
daemon: added 1016r
daemon: activity on:
daemon: select: listen=6 active_threads=0 tvp=NULL
daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: new connection on 1017
daemon: added 1017r
daemon: activity on:
daemon: select: listen=6 active_threads=0 tvp=NULL
daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: new connection on 1018
daemon: added 1018r
daemon: activity on:
daemon: select: listen=6 active_threads=0 tvp=NULL
daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: new connection on 1019
daemon: added 1019r
daemon: activity on:
daemon: select: listen=6 active_threads=0 tvp=NULL
daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: new connection on 1020
daemon: added 1020r
daemon: activity on:
daemon: select: listen=6 active_threads=0 tvp=NULL
daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: new connection on 1021
daemon: added 1021r
daemon: activity on:
daemon: select: listen=6 active_threads=0 tvp=NULL
daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: new connection on 1022
daemon: added 1022r
daemon: activity on:
daemon: select: listen=6 active_threads=0 tvp=NULL
daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: new connection on 1023
daemon: added 1023r
daemon: activity on:
daemon: select: listen=6 active_threads=0 tvp=NULL
daemon: activity on 1 descriptors
daemon: accept(6) failed errno=24 (Too many open files)
daemon: activity on: