Mysql server has gone away

I haven’t so much as logged into our RT server in months, but today it started periodically pitching “MySQL server has gone away errors”. The system health is good, though I didn’t think to check the MySQL connections before restarting MySQL the first time, it reoccurs with only 19 connections.

I’m aware that we’re running relatively old versions of everything, but I’m surprised that things would fall apart for no reason. MySQL runs on the same server as RT, so there should be no reason for the disconnect.

Jan 20 16:20:21 sjspdsupport RT: Ticket 373 created in queue ‘comcast-client’ by jdavis (/usr/lib/rt/RT/Ticket_Overlay.pm:730)
Jan 20 16:20:21 sjspdsupport RT: DBD::mysql::st execute failed: MySQL server has gone away at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/Apache/Session/S
tore/DBI.pm line 67, line 331. (/usr/lib/rt/RT.pm:287)
Jan 20 16:20:21 sjspdsupport RT: DBD::mysql::st execute failed: MySQL server has gone away at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5/Apache/Session/L
ock/MySQL.pm line 70, line 331. (/usr/lib/rt/RT.pm:287)

Has anyone else seen this? Is there more tuning I can do to prevent this? (connections don’t seem to be an issue). It’s not 100% reproducible, but since it’s an external production ticketing site, it’s of great concern.

Thanks!

Kimberly McKinnis
System Operations Engineer
Service Provider Division, TiVo Inc
408-519-9607