apache increases load to 200

[cyon]

I have tons of this messages in my error_log:

[Sun Jan 11 13:18:23 2004] [error] child process 21474 still did not exit, sending a SIGKILL
[Sun Jan 11 13:18:23 2004] [error] child process 21478 still did not exit, sending a SIGKILL
[Sun Jan 11 13:18:23 2004] [error] child process 21482 still did not exit, sending a SIGKILL
[Sun Jan 11 13:18:23 2004] [error] child process 21484 still did not exit, sending a SIGKILL
[Sun Jan 11 13:18:24 2004] [error] could not make child process 1244 exit, attempting to continue anyway
[Sun Jan 11 13:18:24 2004] [error] could not make child process 1271 exit, attempting to continue anyway
[Sun Jan 11 13:18:24 2004] [error] could not make child process 1272 exit, attempting to continue anyway

..and apache crashes every few hours.
The Server was running several months without problems. I hadn't changed anything neither I added new accounts. The load goes very high as well. 200 is standard.
Simultaneously I recieve a lot of E-Mails that apache has reached the maxclients limit and has exceeded the maximum amount of open files.

Has anyone an idea where the problem is?

Greetings, dave.

[fireform90]

Sometimes I have this happen from too many stray or abandoned processes. It helps to restart apache stop/start so it clears all the dead processes.