Squid hogging memory with children

[Greg Baker <ggbaker@sfu.ca>]

I just upgraded Squid (to 2.1.2-1, the newest in stable).  It's 
started to spawn a bunch of (16) child processes that consume a lot of my 
memory.  Despite my best efforts with the config file, I can't change 
the number of children.  Can anybody give my a pointer on this? 

I just want to use squid as a cache for my PPP connection, and don't 
want to hand over 100 Mb to it.

The following output might help anybody who might understand what's 
going on:     :-) 

----
# pstree
init-+-RunCache---squid-+-dnsserver
     |                  |-pinger
     |                  `-squid---16*[squid]
...

# cat /etc/squid.conf | egrep -v "(^\#|^$)"
cache_mem  2 MB
cache_dir /var/spool/squid 100 16 16
dns_children 1
redirect_children 1
authenticate_children 1
acl all src 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
acl manager proto cache_object
acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255
acl SSL_ports port 443 563
acl Safe_ports port 80 21 443 563 70 210 1025-65535
acl purge method PURGE
acl CONNECT method CONNECT
http_access allow manager localhost
http_access deny manager
http_access allow purge localhost
http_access deny purge
http_access deny !Safe_ports
http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports
http_access deny all
icp_access allow all
miss_access allow all
http_anonymizer standard
----

Thanks for any help.

Greg

-----------
The geek shall inherit the earth.