BIG problem/question

Anon

Hi,

I have a very dynamic site which is, in simplest terms, a chatting system. I use mySQL and PHP to run the system and I have always had the following problem:

When about 25-30 users are online and chatting, mySQL is constanty 'crashing' and spitting out an error like: "Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in common.rpc on line 23
Cannot establish link to database."

The max users is set to something like 100, so I don't know why the system is constantly doing this. I've gone through all of the scripts that power the site and made them as efficient as possible..made sure all open mySQL links were being closed, etc., etc. Does ANYONE out there have an ideas/advice? I've been dealing with this annoyance for almost a year now and I can't seem to fix it; even the mySQL.com mailing list people and those that helped create mySQL can only give me "duuuuuuh" type of unhelpful answers. I'm really reaching my ropes end, here.

Could it possibly have anything to do with using mysql_connect() (or mysql_pconnect) in conjunction with mysql_select_db() ? Could this be choking mySQL up?

I'm going nuts, here!!!! ; )

Anon

I had the exact same problem on an auction site I created and changed from mysql_connect() to mysql_pconnect() and it went away...

Hope this helps.

Darren

Anon

Yes, I've been told this before.

So are you suggesting that I change mysql_connect() to mysql_pconnect() in ALL of my scripts or just certain ones? I guess that also means I need to eliminate all of the mysql_close() functions as well, correct?

Anon

pconnect re-uses opened connections, while mysql_connect() opens a new connection every time it is called.

You can't close a pconnect using mysql_close(). (that's the point of P)

If you use mysql_connect() and there is already a pconnection for that database/username/password, it will use the exiting connection.

The obvious stuff just in case:
You only need to open a connection once. You can do several queries using the same connection, you don't have to open-query-close open-query-close.
You don't have to open a connection in an include() script if you have already opened one in the parent script.