MySQL, PHP low-load problems

Hi all, Live is strange sometimes, and so is this error we have here. I have a large forum (more then 300.000 pageviews a day) running. We are using php-4.04pl1 (with the Zend/zend_list.c file patched) and we are using MySQL 3.23.36-log. We are using the following piece of code to connect to the dbase: if(!mysql_pconnect($db[$no]["host"],$db[$no]["user"],$db[$no]["pass"])){ if(!mysql_connect($db[$no]["host"],$db[$no]["user"],$db[$no]["pass"])){ die(error(55)); under normal circumstances this is running normal, not to much error #55's. But, when the load on the forum is lowering, the ammount of errors is increasing. This is very annoying (i mean, under high-load it is working perfect, but at nights when the load is low you'll get error after error. as example: hour #errors 19 56 20 45 21 60 22 49 23 41 0 65 1 105 2 146 3 304 4 277 (4:00 ~ 4:50) error we receive: 2006: MySQL server has gone away The configuration i use: http://gathering.tweakers.net: FreeBSD Arshia.webmagix.net 4.3-BETA FreeBSD 4.3-BETA #0: running on an Tbird 1GHz with 512MB ram MySQL 3.23.36 server is running on an dual PIII-1 GHz with 1.5G ram php-config: ./configure --with-apache=../apache_1.3.19 --enable-track-vars \ --enable-magic-quotes --with-gd=/usr/local --with-mysql --with-zlib=../zlib- 1.1.3 I still don't know who is wrong, PHP or MySQL, i hope some of you can give me more clarity in this strange behauvior. tia, Kees Hoekzema kees@tweakers.net http://gathering.tweakers.net