UBB.Developers Forums UBB.threads 7 Development How Do I? too many connections into the database: logfile fills up immediately

Since several months we have the problem when too many users are active in the forums, the database will not allow any more connections. At the moment we can't do anything to fix that, because we're on a shared server without access to the mysql settings. Well, we still can live with that until running our own server.

But yesterday the log was filled up with these "User ubb has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections" errors. Even the problem only consisted for a few seconds!

The log has got more than 3800 rows and start with:
[ERROR][Thu, Oct 07 2004 15:58:07 +0200] [/showflat.php] [80.144.38.180] Script: - Line: Unable to connect to the database! - User ubb has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections
[ERROR][Thu, Oct 07 2004 15:58:07 +0200] [/showflat.php] [80.144.38.180] Script: /htdocs/forum/ubbt.inc.php - Line: 2034 SELECT U_Username,U_Password,U_SessionId, U_StyleSheet, U_Status, U_Privates, U_FrontPage, U_Number, U_Banned,U_LastOn,U_OC_Userid FROM w3t_Users WHERE U_Number = '480' - User ubb has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections
[ERROR][Thu, Oct 07 2004 15:58:07 +0200] [/showflat.php] [80.144.38.180] Script: /htdocs/forum/ubbt.inc.php - Line: 2034 SELECT U_Username,U_Password,U_SessionId, U_StyleSheet, U_Status, U_Privates, U_FrontPage, U_Number, U_Banned,U_LastOn,U_OC_Userid FROM w3t_Users WHERE U_Number = '480' - User ubb has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections
[ERROR][Thu, Oct 07 2004 15:58:07 +0200] [/showflat.php] [80.144.38.180] Script: /htdocs/forum/ubbt.inc.php - Line: 2034 SELECT U_Username,U_Password,U_SessionId, U_StyleSheet, U_Status, U_Privates, U_FrontPage, U_Number, U_Banned,U_LastOn,U_OC_Userid FROM w3t_Users WHERE U_Number = '480' - User ubb has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections
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[ERROR][Thu, Oct 07 2004 15:58:08 +0200] [/showflat.php] [80.144.38.180] Script: /htdocs/forum/ubbt.inc.php - Line: 2034 SELECT U_Username,U_Password,U_SessionId, U_StyleSheet, U_Status, U_Privates, U_FrontPage, U_Number, U_Banned,U_LastOn,U_OC_Userid FROM w3t_Users WHERE U_Number = '480' - User ubb has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections

There are 545 Rows with the same error, almost same time, same U_Number. How can this happen? I'm quite sure the query really isn't executed 545 times...

The log continues with:
[ERROR][Thu, Oct 07 2004 15:58:09 +0200] [/showflat.php] [82.182.119.10] Script: - Line: Unable to connect to the database! - User ubb has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections
[ERROR][Thu, Oct 07 2004 15:58:09 +0200] [/showflat.php] [82.182.119.10] Script: /htdocs/forum/ubbt.inc.php - Line: 2034 SELECT U_Username,U_Password,U_SessionId, U_StyleSheet, U_Status, U_Privates, U_FrontPage, U_Number, U_Banned,U_LastOn,U_OC_Userid FROM w3t_Users WHERE U_Number = '' - User ubb has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections
[ERROR][Thu, Oct 07 2004 15:58:09 +0200] [/showflat.php] [82.182.119.10] Script: /htdocs/forum/ubbt.inc.php - Line: 2034 SELECT U_Username,U_Password,U_SessionId, U_StyleSheet, U_Status, U_Privates, U_FrontPage, U_Number, U_Banned,U_LastOn,U_OC_Userid FROM w3t_Users WHERE U_Number = '' - User ubb has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections
.
.
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and so on with different User IDs.

Any ideas?

Make sure that you have "persistent connections" turned off in the Edit Config Setttings of your admin panel, that should take care of it for you.

right, but persistent connections are already off since a long time.

The 'max_user_connections' is for the entire server - not just your forums. The issue is with your host...they need to increase the number. There's really nothing you can do on your own, aside from turning of pconnect which doesn't apply to you.

Yes, but my question is regarding the logfile(!). Why are there so many entrys for one query?

Well - checkout the debug information on the page. Every page does between 12 and 40 queries - so the log file filling up when MySQL is out is quite normal.

But we are talking about the same query several hundred times (see first post)?

The error log logs each query that has an error. That's the authenticate query. It's called on every page, by every user (registered or anonymous) so you could have hundreds of those a minute on an active site.