[cobalt-security] too many files open?

["Matthew Nuzum" <cobalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been getting a couple of interesting entries in my logwatch for the
last couple of days.  They all look something like this:

Apr  2 15:45:03 www proftpd[16706]: Unable to open password file
/etc/passwd for reading: Too many open files in system

I also get these entries here: (I'm not as worried about these, I think
they're low mem problems)
Apr  1 04:43:56 www kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for
lcdstop... 
Apr  2 04:47:27 www kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for
in.qpopper... 
Apr  2 04:47:27 www kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for
in.qpopper... 
Apr  2 04:47:53 www kernel: VM: do_try_to_free_pages failed for
analog...

The first time I noticed this problem was the other day, right after I
accidentally caused an infinite loop with PHP and Apache.  It pretty
much disabled the server, but fortunately I was already logged in
through SSH so I just had to restart apache.  When that happened,
nothing on the server was working.

Now, I'm getting these entries only for ProFTP.

the first one is at
Apr  2 15:45:01
And  the last one is at
Apr  2 21:56:59  

I'm getting ready to move off of this server, but I still need it for a
couple more weeks.  I checked for rootkits and didn't find anything.

Any suggestions or comments?  On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is "no
problem-o," and 10 is "It's gonna blow!", where am I?

Thanks in advance,
Matt Nuzum