How Does This Happen?
 

mysql> show status like 'max%';
+----------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-------+
| Max_used_connections | 47 |
+----------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> show status like 'max%';
+----------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-------+
| Max_used_connections | 47 |
+----------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)

mysql> show status like 'max%';
+----------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-------+
| Max_used_connections | 47 |
+----------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.05 sec)

mysql> show status like 'max%';
+----------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-------+
| Max_used_connections | 47 |
+----------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> show status like 'max%';
+----------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-------+
| Max_used_connections | 47 |
+----------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.03 sec)

mysql> show status like 'max%';
+----------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-------+
| Max_used_connections | 257 |
+----------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.18 sec)

i would check periodically....and i had about 150 users on and 47 connections....now i set my limit in vb to 250. its set to 500 in my my.cnf.

when i exceed the vb limit...it slows thew board to a crawl...and i can barely get my commands into putty.

how the heck did it goto 250+ all of a sudden!??! thats crazy....help.

Have you enabled the slow query log?

You might get a few queries stuck and then everything queues up-the log can help you figure out what's wrong.

The only thing that I've seen that can do that is the boolean full-text search. The only solutions are to either turn it off or to get a slave DB server.