MySql Proccesslist filled with "Sleep" Entries leading to "Too many Connections"?

Question

I'd like to ask your help on a longstanding issue with php/mysql connections.

Every time I execute a "SHOW PROCESSLIST" command it shows me about 400 idle (Status: Sleep) connections to the database Server emerging from our 5 Webservers.

That never was much of a problem (and I didn't find a quick solution) until recently traffic numbers increased and since then MySQL reports the "to many connections" Problems repeatedly, even so 350+ of those connections are in "sleep" state. Also a server can't get a MySQL connection even if there are sleeping connection to that same server.

All those connections vanish when an apache server is restated.

The PHP Code used to create the Database connections uses the normal "mysql" Module, the "mysqli" Module, PEAR::DB and Zend Framework Db Adapter. (Different projects). NONE of the projects uses persistent connections.

Raising the connection-limit is possible but doesn't seem like a good solution since it's 450 now and there are only 20-100 "real" connections at a time anyways.

My question:

Why are there so many connections in sleep state and how can I prevent that?

-- Update:

The Number of Apache requests running at a time never exceeds 50 concurrent requests, so i guess there is a problem with closing the connection or apache keeps the port open without a phpscript attached or something (?)

my.cnf in case it's helpful:

innodb_buffer_pool_size = 1024M  max_allowed_packet = 5M net_buffer_length = 8K  read_buffer_size = 2M read_rnd_buffer_size = 8M  query_cache_size = 512M myisam_sort_buffer_size = 128M  max_connections = 450 thread_cache = 50 key_buffer_size = 1280M join_buffer_size = 16M  table_cache = 2048 sort_buffer_size = 64M tmp_table_size = 512M max_heap_table_size = 512M  thread_concurrency = 8  log-slow-queries = /daten/mysql-log/slow-log long_query_time = 1 log_queries_not_using_indexes  innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 64M innodb_log_file_size = 64M innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 2 innodb_file_per_table 

Answer 1

Basically, you get connections in the Sleep state when :

• a PHP script connects to MySQL
• some queries are executed
• then, the PHP script does some stuff that takes time
  • without disconnecting from the DB
• and, finally, the PHP script ends
  • which means it disconnects from the MySQL server

So, you generally end up with many processes in a Sleep state when you have a lot of PHP processes that stay connected, without actually doing anything on the database-side.

A basic idea, so : make sure you don't have PHP processes that run for too long -- or force them to disconnect as soon as they don't need to access the database anymore.

Another thing, that I often see when there is some load on the server :

• There are more and more requests coming to Apache
  • which means many pages to generate
• Each PHP script, in order to generate a page, connects to the DB and does some queries
• These queries take more and more time, as the load on the DB server increases
• Which means more processes keep stacking up

A solution that can help is to reduce the time your queries take -- optimizing the longest ones.