how to limit number of mysqld processes?

[Phil]

on Fedora Core 3

I have about 15 mysqld processes running. They all appear to be child
processes of one. Can I limit the number of child processes of MySQL?

Here is the list of processes running:
root      9505     1  0 10:19 ?        00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysqld_safe
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid
mysql     9698  9505  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9699  9698  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9700  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9701  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9702  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9703  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9704  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9705  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9706  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9707  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9709  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:01 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
mysql     9710  9699  0 11:42 ?        00:00:01 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/
--datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql
--pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/vottrt1.vistar.ca.pid --skip-locking
--socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
root      9804  9763  0 11:53 pts/1    00:00:00 grep mysql