[mod_python] Error:Failed to reinit global mutex

this might be more of an OS or Apache question but....

i'm debugging something right now which seems to crash apache /
mod_python.  probably something i'm doing, i'm sure.  anyhow, it
wouldn't be much of a problem except that when it crashes, i can't
restart the server without rebooting.  i get errors like:

[Thu Mar 11 10:08:51 2004] [notice] mod_python: Creating 32 session mutexes based on 50 max processes and 0 max threads.
(24)Too many open files: mod_python: Failed to reinit global mutex /tmp/mpmtx84815.
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
[Thu Mar 11 10:08:52 2004] [error] make_obcallback: could not import mod_python.apache.

ImportError: No module named mod_python.apache
[Thu Mar 11 10:10:38 2004] [error] (24)Too many open files: apr_accept: (client socket)

i've cleaned up /tmp/mpm*, /var/run/httpd.scoreboard, etc.  i've also
verified that in fact

kern.openfiles: 68
kern.maxfiles: 12328

and raised the openfiles limit on the www process, and checked lsof
which says there isn't much open.  so it looks like some kind of
shared memory / locking thing, except that ipcs tells me not much: i
guess it's not a sysv ipc thing.

does anyone know how to clean house for this kind of stuff?

B