OpenSSH too many files open

[Matt Simonsen]

My company is running OpenSSH 2.5.1 (via inetd) and over time it appears
that OpenSSH sessions are not being properly terminated on the server. The
basic symptom is that thousands of files are opened and not being let go of
as users close them, eventually taking us to the 4000 open file limit.

I have seen on some online man pages with an IdleTimeout option, although it
does not appear to work for the OpenSSH version I am using (nor is it in the
man pages). Is there some option that may help this problem, we are using
the default KeepAlive enabled. Second, any suggestions on how can I prevent
this behavior? Other than this everything is working very well, but it is
causing pretty serious problems and I don't think croning a daily killall -9
sshd is really the answer.

Thanks
Matt Simonsen