Senmail saslauthd too many open files

[hand-solo]

Every now and then I get an issue where users cant send emails. I see this in the error log:

Dec  8 12:01:41 smtp saslauthd[21791]: PAM [error: /lib64/security/pam_deny.so: cannot open shared object file: Too many open files]
Dec  8 12:01:41 smtp saslauthd[21791]: PAM adding faulty module: /lib64/security/pam_deny.so
Dec  8 12:01:41 smtp saslauthd[21791]: PAM unable to dlopen(/lib64/security/pam_permit.so)
Dec  8 12:01:41 smtp saslauthd[21791]: PAM [error: /lib64/security/pam_permit.so: cannot open shared object file: Too many open files]
Dec  8 12:01:41 smtp saslauthd[21791]: PAM adding faulty module: /lib64/security/pam_permit.so

When I run
lsof | awk '{printf("%s\n",$1)}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

It will show saslauthd has over 4k files open, restarting saslauthd fixes the probelm but it will come back every month or so. Any ideas on a more permanent fix?

Thanks.

[HROAdmin26]

Google: linux increase open file limit

[ccolumbu]

I added a ulimit call to /etc/sysconfig/named, that fixed it.
I assume you can do something similar to saslauthd and/or sendmail.