I've been doing some minor hacking on my i386 v1.6.2 (stable) kernel.
My machine is a P166 w/80M ram.

I needed more memory for ipf, so in my kernel config I increased
NKMEMPAGES (OK I doubled it...) per the kernel config segment below.

After I did this I tried to run the tor server which requests
1024 file descriptors and now it crashed saying it could only get 956? 

I then looked at the Options page and it seemed intuitive enough to 
increase NOFILE which I also did. But this had no effect...my limit
is still 956 descriptors. I have also pulled relevent info from the sysctl -a
dump below.

Can anyone give me hints? (should I use a different mailing list?)

Kernel config segment (MYKERN):
  options  SHMMAXPGS=2048 # 1024 pages is the default 
     
  # VM Releated Options 
  options  NKMEMPAGES=16392
  #options  NKMEMPAGES=8196
  options NOFILE=1648

Sysctl -a - relevent line items:
kern.osrelease = 1.6.2_STABLE
kern.osrevision = 106000200
kern.version = NetBSD 1.6.2_STABLE (MYKERN) #3: Mon Jan 24 18:50:26 EST 2005
    root@lickety:/home/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/MYSMALL

kern.maxvnodes = 2746
kern.maxproc = 276
kern.maxfiles = 956

proc.curproc.rlimit.descriptors.soft = 956
proc.curproc.rlimit.descriptors.hard = 956
hw.physmem = 83488768
hw.usermem = 83320832
hw.pagesize = 4096