[@webp Participant 9 years, 11 months ago]

Found the solution.
In /etc/mysql/my.cnf (/root/my2.cnf for me since it’s my second temp mysql instance for me), I changed wait_timeout from 600 to:

wait_timeout = 600000000000000

I found I read somewhere else in this forum that says the same, but I couldn’t find it again.
Please refer to: MySQL wait_timeout and WordPress

• wait_timeout is the time mysql will hold a non-interactive connection open for before closing it basically.
• It’s the number of seconds of inactivity on a single connection mysql will wait for before terminating a connection. For instance you may make a connection 1 second into script execution then go away and do 40 seconds of work in php and when you go back to use your connection again, mysql has killed it.