"Too many open files" and reboot fail advice

All,

We are currently suffering the dreaded "Too many open files" problem that I 
have now read about in many previous postings to this list. It has happened 
since I moved to Panther.

JavaMonitor fails to stop/start instances, the instances themselves fill 
their log files with IOExceptions, too many open files.

What is worse, the two times we have had to reboot following this, the 
machine has been inaccessible following the first reboot (connection 
refused to ssh), requiring a second local power cycle in both cases.

Can anyone say which version of WO/Mac OS X fixed this problem for them?

I don't seem to get the problem on our two backup/test boxes which are 
running Panther Client 10.3.7 and WO5.2.2.

I have the following setup on the XServe that has the problems:

Mac OS X Server 10.3 (I can't upgrade to the latest 10.3.8?) because it 
will force a version of WO deployment onto me that I can't use with our 
Java Client apps. Aggrrr!

I *think* we are running WO5.2.2 but the installation was a bit roundabout 
so I can't be certain, it is a bit of a mess. I did the following:

Installed Mac OS X Server 10.3
Installed WO5.2 Developer (because I have the 5.2.2 Developer upgrade to 
add to it but can't find a WO5.2.2 Deployment download)
Install WO5.2.2 Developer upgrade

I am assuming that Developer is a superset of Deployment and as long as the 
licence key situation is ok then that should work. But some of this 
shenanigans may explain the problems I am having.

The wotaskd executable on the deployment boxes match each others size at 
11051 from an ls -l.

Any pushes in the right direction would be appreciated.

John