in a situation where you open a connection to a mysql database using mysql_pconnect and the client computer crashes or there is a power failure, the mysql_close command will never be executed. my concern is that eventually there will be a lot of open connections on the mysql server which will never be used... is there a timeout that occurs if a connection is not used? if so how do you specify that value? if not then at what point will i run out of resources to open another connection to a mysql server?