mismatch between v$process and v$session

Hi all,

    I have a strange problem (at least for me). Oracle 8.1.7.4 on Hp Tru64
I have a lot of rows in v$process without the corresponding one in the v$session.
the number of rows in v$process grows until it reachs the operating system maximum number of processes and it stop becaus of the os limit (actually 512). the active sessions number is stable around 200 while the number of processes is always near to the limit (512). I did a ps -fu oracle and I noticed that there are a lot of processes with description LOCAL=NO
I think they are user processes originating from end-user connections, but I don't know why they are there with no oracle sessions. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance,

    Giovanni
P.S. I did not check it but I'm quite sure that MTS is not enabled.

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