Processes Piling up with the lockf state

[Sydney Longfellow]

Hi!

I asked this a couple days ago but I forgot to put a subject line in. 
I'm getting problems with my server locking up after accumulating far
too many processes until I have to reboot.  

The states of the processes are reading either sbwait or lockf when this
spiral out of control starts to happen.

Any ideas what might cause this?

Thanks in advance,
Syd