MySQL server has gone away

I moved my Quixote applications to a new Linux server and upgraded to
MySQL 5, and suddenly now things hang up sometimes with 'MySQL server
has gone away' exceptions.  The MySQL manual suggests several possible
reasons (timeout on client thread, large query size/result size, MySQL
server restarting itself), but I was wondering whether anyone else is
getting this in a Quixote context, especially with session2.  Using
Quixote 2.4, scgi 1.9, session2 0.6, Apache 2.0.54, MySQL 5.0.16,
Linux Gentoo 2005.1.

The MySQL server is responding fine; I just have to restart the
Quixote application.  But MySQL shows three idle connections from
Quixote sleeping.  Is something in Quixote or session2 using
persistent connections?

--
Mike Orr <[email protected]>
([email protected] address is semi-reliable)