Ok, here's what I found so far. 1) wait_timeout doesn't work under windows http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/News-4.0.15.html, 4.0.15 (dev) mysql is supposed to fix this. In http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=13589 georg@php.net advises connecting like this: mysql_pconnect($host, $user, $pass, MYSQL_CLIENT_INTERACTIVE); (this uses the interactive_timeout setting in mysql) I've tried this, but interactive_timeout still doesn't kill idle connections. 2) http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/000173.html halfway down the page, John Lim says: > Yes, yes, yes. And get rid of pconnect while your at it. It is somewhat > slower when the number of connections is at a > slower rate, but helps keep up availablity when the server is under stress. > Its a tradeoff. > At any rate, creating connections to MySQL is very fast. Faster still if > there are cached threads. When you get rid of pconnect you can see > how many connections are attached simultaneiously at any one time. If > you have more than one apache/PHP server connected to the MySQL > server, the effects can be geometric. Once you get a general feeling > for how many are usually connected at one time, set the thread cache > to that number. I might mail off to John to find out the full story on pconnect. AFAIK, I'm considering it broken for now and going back to mysql_connect. -- PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php