In MySQL error logs, I see these quite few a warnings like these:

120611 16:12:30 [Warning] Aborted connection 2619503 to db: 'db_name' user: 'user_name' host: 'webapp_hostname' (Got an error reading communication packets)


Haven't noticed any loss of data per se, so I am wondering what this warning means, or what causes it, and if how one might address the issue causing these. This is on RHEL 6.1 and MySQL Enterprise 5.5.

One of the silent killers of MySQL Connections is the MySQL Packet.

First, let's figure out what a MySQL Packet is.

According to the page 99 of "Understanding MySQL Internals" (ISBN 0-596-00957-7), here are paragraphs 1-3 explaining MySQL Packets:


  MySQL network communication code was
  written under the assumption that
  queries are always reasonably short,
  and therefore can be sent to and
  processed by the server in one chunk,
  which is called a packet in MySQL
  terminology. The server allocates the
  memory for a temporary buffer to store
  the packet, and it requests enough to
  fit it entirely. This architecture
  requires a precaution to avoid having
  the server run out of memory---a cap
  on the size of the packet, which this
  option accomplishes.
  
  The code of interest in relation to
  this option is found in
  sql/net_serv.cc. Take a look at my_net_read(), then follow the call to my_real_read() and pay
  particular attention to
  net_realloc().
  
  This variable also limits the length
  of a result of many string functons.
  See sql/field.cc and
  sql/intem_strfunc.cc for details.


Knowing this about MySQL Packets allows a Developer/DBA to size them up to accommodate multiple BLOBs inside one packet even if they are obnoxiously large. Definitely, a packet too small will cause problems for open connections in this respect.

According to the MySQL Documentation


You can also get these errors if you send a query to the server that is incorrect or too large. If mysqld receives a packet that is too large or out of order, it assumes that something has gone wrong with the client and closes the connection. If you need big queries (for example, if you are working with big BLOB columns), you can increase the query limit by setting the server's max_allowed_packet variable, which has a default value of 1MB. You may also need to increase the maximum packet size on the client end. More information on setting the packet size is given in Section C.5.2.10, “Packet too large”. 
An INSERT or REPLACE statement that inserts a great many rows can also cause these sorts of errors. Either one of these statements sends a single request to the server irrespective of the number of rows to be inserted; thus, you can often avoid the error by reducing the number of rows sent per INSERT or REPLACE. 


RECOMMENDATION

Try raising the max_allowed_packet to a much larger number, since the default is 1M. I would suggest about 10 times the largest TEXT or BLOB field you have in your current dataset.

To set the max_allowed_packet to 256M, you can add it to /etc/my.cnf or my.ini

[mysqld]
max_allowed_packet=256M


to cover future restarts of mysqld. To install the value now on the server, please run this:

SET GLOBAL max_allowed_packet = 1024 * 1024 * 256;


Give it a Try !!!
