When establishing a persistent connection, if PHP finds an existing connection it will do a mysql_stat() on the link that it found and then check the error for CR_SERVER_GONE_ERROR then reconnects on failure. I believe mysql's C API has a better function to do what is performed. The mysql_ping() api function will perform the same functionality at a lower cost in performance. The original host/port/user/pass information should be retained in the mysql link structure so that a failed mysql_ping() will reconnect automatically to the database server.

This also removes the logging entry caused by a mysql status command. This does have an impact for sites with a higher load.

Thanks for you consideration on this.