MYSQL Error user **** has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections

[Fraze]

I've been told by my hosting company that our max consecutive active connections to the SQL database is 20.

Does vbulletin have code in it to automatically sever the connection when the user is no longer active?

[Wayne Luke]

By default it closes connections when the system is done using them. Make sure that persistent_connections is turned off in your config.php file. You can also set vBulletin to send out a "Server is Busy" message when it reaches a certain number of sessions. You can set this under vBulletin Options -> Server Settings and Optimization Options. I would set it to 17 or 18 or you will probably continue to hit the limit. However this will limit the number of people who can be logged in at any one time.

[Fraze]

having spoken to my hosting they have no clarified and the 20 max relates to the simultaneous table connections a single user session is allowed i.e my database username.

Not being an SQL guru myself I am more than a little confused.

[Steve Machol]

You are going to be limited with this host. There is no way around this.

[Fraze]

I am already looking alternative hosting as this small limit is atrocious. how can they provide unlimited bandwidth with an sql database if they only limit the username connections to 20?

thanks for all your help

[Wayne Luke]

The limit is how. They are actually limiting your bandwidth by forcing you into a situation where you site cannot grow. There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth so they had behind other resource restrictions.

[Fraze]

well we're at loggerheads with them at the moment trying to get our money back, as they do not publicise this restriction anywhere in their literature or on their site.

I'm moving over to a provider that has unlimited bandwidth & assures me that the database connection limit is currently set to unlimited as they have dedicated DB server boxes

[Steve Machol]

I'm moving over to a provider that has unlimited bandwidth...

Honestly there is no such thing and I would be very wary of anyone claiming to offer this.

[Fraze]

yeah i know - unlimited really means 'as much bandwidth as you need within reasonable limits' it's probably a 60gb cap or something which is more than adequate

[Beller]

20 connections is crazy....
Would spiders crawling count as a connection???
I have had up to 20 of them on at one time

[Steve Machol]

Yep, those would count.

[Beller]

Yep, those would count.

Not much good for running a forum so!

[Steve Machol]

Search engines indexing a site are not good for forums? I guess I have a different perspective on that.

You can always use a robots.txt file to keep out the search engines if you want.

[The Vegan Forum]

We also have had the same kind of error messages lately.

I tried to set the cookie cut-off time very low yesterday (I know, people will be automatically logged out when doing this - it was only a short test), and even if we have circa 400 visitors pr. hour, during 30 seconds, we never had more than 7-12 connections during this test. (We have over 3000 members and circa 200,000 posts).

I may misunderstand something here.

Is a connections are counted as 'not active' as soon as a page is loaded by a user/search engine?

To make a simple example, if a loading a page = 'one connection', and takes a second, then eg. max 20 'connections' at the same time would mean 20 users pr second (if a page takes a second to load). That's 18,000 page loadings pr hour. If every user loads 30 pages during that hour, that's still 600 users online pr hour.

What is a 'normal' setting on a shared server for max user connections?

How large can a forum be before a shared server is a useless solution? I know no specific numbers can be here, but are there any others out here with forums in our size range on a shared server - without these problems?

[Steve Machol]

The cookie timeout has nothing to do with this. It's a server setting and a server problem. There is no 'normal' setting for this. It depends on the host, their servers and the types of hosting plans they offer.