mysqli_connect(): Too many connections

Symptoms

You may receive errors like the following on your website, or when trying to access MySQL from the command line or phpMyAdmin.

mysqli_connect(): (08004/1040): Too many connections

mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/1040): Too many connections

Description 

This occurs when MySQL has reached its max_connections limit. Once the limit is reached, MySQL will no longer accept connections.

Workaround

Check for sleeping queries with the following command.

mysql -e "show processlist"|grep -c Sleep

Compare that against the max_connections setting for MySQL.

mysql -e "show variables like 'max_connections'"

If a large portion of the max_connections is being used by sleeping queries, you might consider lowering the wait_timeout setting. The wait_timeout setting can be changed in the /etc/my.cnf file. You can check the current wait_timeout with the following command.

mysql -e "show variables like 'wait_timeout'"

If there are not many sleeping queries, you might consider raising the max_connections limit. The max_connections setting can be changed in the /etc/my.cnf file as well.

MySQL will need to be restarted after making changes to the /etc/my.cnf file. This can be done with the following command.

/scripts/restartsrv_mysql