[Xapian-discuss] Problems with file descriptors

[Gavin Ellis Mendel-Gleason]

I'm using the xapian php4 bindings for a small website.  We are doing a
fairly large number of xapian searches and repeatedly run out of file
descriptors.  It can take quite a long time before the computer can get
the file descriptors back which causes the whole site to go down.  I
have experienced this on debian woody and debian sarge.  

There was a similar message concerning file descriptors on Xapian
discuss by Arjen van der Meijden on Mon Jan 31 11:05:33 GMT 2005.  I
think that I may be experiencing the same problem.  

The php4 bindings do not allow you to delete the database without
encountering a segmentation fault.  So I can't delete the database
manually.  My guess is that for some reason the database objects aren't
being garbage collected and for this reason the file descriptors can not
be reclaimed.

I'm using
 
$database = null; 

after every query, but this doesn't seem to help. 

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this problem? 

Gavin