VFS: file-max limit reached

[Ricardo Luiz de Andrade Abrantes <rabrantes@qualitycomm.com.br>]

Hello,
My debian system started to "pop out" this message: "VFS: file-max limit 12822
reached". I did a search around and found that the problem is related with the
amount of filehandles in use by the system. I increased this value, but at some
point it's always reached. 
Someone told me to search for the proccess wich is eating my filehandles with
"lsof" but I couldn't do it. The problem is when my file-nr shows me something
like: "14500 0 12822", the "lsof | wc -l" shows me "1287". So, when my system
warns me that 14500 filehandles are being used, lsof tells me that my proccess
are using only 1287. 
Does anyone know how can I find what proccess is eating all the systems
filehandles? Or does anyone know how can I find what's going on here?


   Thnx,


         Ricardo