I'm load-testing a dedicated server by making 20 CGI requests
at the same time, and I'm getting an occasional

MySQL database error 2013:
Lost connection to MySQL server during query

The server is running Linux (Red Hat Fedora 5) and MySQL 5.

The MySQL server and client are on the same machine, so there shouldn't
be a network error. MySQL isn't crashing. The requests aren't large
and each one affects only one table row. About 1 in 50 requests fails.

20 simultaneous requests shouldn't be overloading anything, although
the server does go compute-bound.

I've read
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/gone-away.html
and none of the problems there seem to apply.

John Nagle