[Mailman-Developers] Mailman throwing lost-datafile errors with every message

[foobar at eh.net]

Jun 24 15:49:39 2004 (353) lost data files for filebase:
1088100914.7161551+9a9200d2cba7be877a02453e1f812069b0c78761
<rinse and repeat about once a second>
Mailman 2.1.2 (I'll upgrade if you INSIST...)
Python 2.2
SunOS eh.net 5.7 Generic_106541-24 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-5_10


I've been getting this line thrown in my error logfile frequently.
Additionally, mailman has about 1200 files open when the (aging) computer
locks up after taking quite a bit of abuse (it tends to end up with the
CPU at 100% iowait, out of swap, with more processes running than is
healthy. (The machine only has 256 megabytes of RAM-- and the replacement
server was initially due to arrive over a month ago, but Hewlett-Packard
has delayed that date to about a month from now).

I've seen this question asked before somewhere in the archives (
http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers@python.org/msg06528.html )
but the (very limited) answer does not seem to have helped.