why would they want to tweak their end to prevent the problems we're currently having?

See, I'm cynical in a different way. I think the chances of any host tweaking their servers, that other accounts reside on, for us is slim to none.

But how do we determine that ahead of time?

I dunno? Ask them? I'm just thinking out loud here. There doesn't seem to be an easy answer.

I'm not sure, if we're warning them up front that we're a risk to their other customers, what their motivation is.

As for the test:

I was not able to open two mysql connections to our database immediately after the board shut down, and then at 5, 10, and 15 minutes. Once I closed the first commandline client down, I could open the other one.

Rob, Tom, I have the db_status from them.

Kristen, I know there's nothing they'll do for us now, so you might want to mention this to them as free feedback. If their connection closing timeout is longer than fifteen minutes, I doubt it's a good use of their resources.

I'd like to see the db_status. If nothing else, it will let me calculate about how much we'd spend for MySQL connections via dreamhost.

Insent, Rob.

Also to Tom.

db_status tells us we do 6.84 MySQL connections per second. At that rate, we'd spend $2091.16 a month on extra conueries at Dreamhost.

See, I just don't see how that could be possible, with the number of members posting.

Am I nuts?

I can see it being true, since at the request of IH we put in explicit closes for each MySQL connection. Each page can open and close a number of connections. In my testing on my machine, I'd see four or five connections opened and closed per message center view.

I don't know what kind of tweaking went on while I was asleep, but I haven't had a single error message since I came back here around 2:45 a.m. EST.

and I spoke too soon--I did get a few errors. They are appearing less, though. But that could just be the low traffic at this time of night.