Upgraded Mandrake 9.1 unable to start X

[Jonathan Hutchins]

I "upgraded" an older Mandrake workstation (8.x or 9.0?) to 9.1, and now it 
won't start X.  It takes a long time to come up with the message "Cound not 
start process.  Unable to create io-slave: Too many open files."  On closing 
this dialog box, we get a background screen with a silver bar across the 
bottom - not kpanel, no menu, just the bar.  I can hit Alt-F2 and get the 
"Run" dialog box, but I can't type anything in it.  ps ax shows a lot of 
kio_file processes attempting to open slave-socket files. 
 
Suggestions on where to start with this one? 

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