Constant Closed Connections

I have started experiencing a constant closed connection problem over the last 3 weeks. At first, I thought that maybe I had an unstable internet connection, but then I noticed the same problem at another location. Every 2-3 minutes, I get the error: / Closing SSH process #6988 ... / / Connection to 167.172.241.241 closed at 2025-11-03 11:30:20 /

I changed the Ping every X seconds from 30 seconds to 60, and this does seem to happen on the 60th second mark. Please advise.

I would recommend to decrease the timeout period, from 60 down to 20 or 15.

Perhaps the server limits the number of connections to a reasonable maximum, and connections are constantly opened by other users? Or the server is just very busy with serving a website? The SSH connection may also be the cause, with network implications, firewall and such stuff.

I am the only user opening a connection through HeidiSQL. Visitors to the websites obviously open and close connections through their browsers. The server is not a busy server. I decreased the timeout period back to 20. I turned off the SSH tunneling. Same problem. I installed dBeaver just to test if I experienced the same problem with it and I do not. This started happening anywhere from 3-6 weeks ago.

I don't really know how to be of more help here. Did it perhaps start with the last release 12.12 (that was roughly 4 weeks ago)? Or did you install nightly builds?

Perhaps also try a different libmysql/libmariadb - there are quite a few pitfalls with one or more versions, though very situation-specific.

Do you have the same issues on a different Windows system connected to the same server?

I do believe that it started about 4 weeks ago. Should I roll back to 12.11 and see if I still have problems?

I did not try on a different computer, just on mine at different locations. I'm also happy to try 12.12 on another machine, but what possible machine dependent issue would cause this? I have not had any other connectivity type of problem connecting to my servers for file transfer or connecting to the servers through moboxterm. Additionally, I had no problem when I used dBeaver to access the same exact databases. No disconnects.

Whatever you want me to try, I will. I love using HeidiSQL and really do not want to switch to any other software.

Yes, please try out v12.11 again. Cannot hurt, and looks like the only promising attempt to somehow find an issue.

I tried 12.11 again and same problem, but I FIGURED IT OUT! A few weeks ago, we added a cron job to kill sleeping processes because we were having a problem with a site having too many sleeping connections open. My connection lost was from that cron job run if I was not actively querying the data for 5 minutes. We changed the cron to exclude sleeping processes opened by root, which is what I log in as. Not sure why I didn't have the problem with dBeaver, but just so pleased that the problem is resolved. Thanks for your help.

Glad you found it! Yea, some things get forgotten which then bite you in the ass later.