How long does a PHP MySQL database connection remain active?

Question

I have a long running PHP script. I am making the database connection at the very beginning of the script and does some database operation at the start up.

After that, the script perform 4 hours of PHP operation without pinging to MySQL with that connection even a single time.

At the end of these long running PHP operations, when I try to execute mysql_query it gives me the following error: MySQL Server has gone Away

Is there any possibility of increasing the connection timeout to be 4 hours? I am using PHP ADODB to connect with MySQL from my PHP application.

Please suggest what to do?

Answer 1

MySQL has a different timeout than PHP. You could increase it in php.ini on the line mysql.connect_timeout = 14400. Also increase the default_socket_timeout = 14400

Note that if your PHP setting allow you to do an ini_set, you can also do as follows:

ini_set('mysql.connect_timeout', 14400);
ini_set('default_socket_timeout', 14400);