MySQL Max_connections stuck on 214 ?

I found MySQL was being annoying earlier and not ‘accepting’ my max_connections = 450 directive on a Debian Wheezy install, and being seemingly stuck on having 214 connections….

It turns out, Debian Wheezy doesn’t have pam_limits.so enabled by default in /etc/pam.d/* files. (But it is commented out, so easy enough to put into place).

Once that’s enabled, you can edit /etc/security/limits.conf and adjust the levels appropriately.

e.g.

/etc/security/limits.conf :

*   hard    nofile  8192
*   soft    nofile  4096

/etc/my.cnf:

max_connections = 450

and now :

mysql> show variables like '%max_connecti%';
+-----------------+-------+
| Variable_name   | Value |
+-----------------+-------+
| max_connections | 450   |
+-----------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)