MySQL eating all memory

[<m.reineke]

Hi,

mysql 3.23.51 is running on a Linux 2.4.18 box (4cpu, 2GB) with Apache 1.3.39.
The server is under load (~160 mysqld processes; 80-120 queries/second
shown by "mysqladmin status").
The problem is that mysqld´s memory usage is growing all the time from
17MB after start up to 500MB 5 hours later. System load grows from
0.4 to 3. We have the same problem for earlier versions of mysql (ex. 3.23.49).

Does anyone know this problem? Any solutions?

Sincerely,
Matt