Changing metapost capacities

I am trying to process a metapost file consisting of a fairly large number 
of rectangles (defined using "draw (x,y)--..--(xp, yp)--cycle"). I get 
the error:

MetaPost capacity exceeded, sorry [input stack size=300].

I tried changing /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf to increase all of the 
capacities and then running "texconfig init" which I thought was the way 
with tetex to increase such capacities, but that does not seem to do 
anything at all (if I run inimpost I get the same max number of strings as 
before, even when I changed all the capacities). 

I am running tetex-1.0.7-66 from redhat 9 (the standard rpms). 

I don't really understand how these things work. Does anyone have any 
suggestions? Thanks.
				--Daniel