database - MySQL Workbench drops connection when idle

Question

I'm using MySQL Workbench 6.3 on my OS X 10.9.5 to manage several cloud databases (hosted on Rackspace), and I get the following issue:

When inactive for 5 minutes, the following problems happen:

• I cannot run any query (error 2013: Lost connection to MySQL server during query)
• when trying to browse tables on my db, I'm getting messages like "Tables could not be fetched", "Views could not be fetched", and so on
• when refreshing the left panel, I get a "Error Code: 2006 MySQL server has gone away"

So basically the connection is gone.

This is really annoying since it happens after only 5 minutes of inactivity. Therefore I need to close the connection and reopen it each time.

I also tried this: MySQL Workbench: How to keep the connection alive, which didn't change anything. In my Workbench Preferences tab, I have the following setup:

• DBMS connection keep-alive interval (in seconds): 600
• DBMS connection read time out (in seconds): 600
• DBMS connection time out (in seconds): 60

Notice that this issue happens precisely after 5 minutes of inactivity! If I run two queries in a 4'59 minutes interval it works perfectly fine. Also my colleagues who connect to the same database on their Workbench don't have this issue.

Does anybody have a solution for this?

Answer 1

Go to Edit -> Preferences -> SQL Editor and there you'll see:

DBMS connection keep-alive interval (in seconds): 600
DBMS connection read time out (in seconds): 600
DBMS connection time out (in seconds): 60

The DBMS connection keep-alive interval means how often Workbench sends keep-alive request to the server to keep the connection alive.

Since 5 minutes == 300 seconds, set DBMS connection keep-alive interval < 300 (e. g. 250)

It will mean "send keep-alive request every 250 seconds". Click OK.

Then quit MySQL Workbench and relaunch it to make the changes take effect.

If you use Standard TCP/IP over SSH connection method, it's also can be helpful to configure ssh ServerAliveInterval as well.