Mez's questions

I've recently moved from MySQL4 to MySQL5 (we had apps that required MySQL4 which we'd finally replaced)

Since then, I've been having LOTS of issues similar to:-

connect() failed: Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 0 

Yes, that is System Error 0 - "Success".

I've no idea why this is happening - but want to find out why

Here's my (sanitised) my.cnf

[client]
port        = 3306
socket      = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

[mysqld_safe]
socket      = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
nice        = 0

[mysqld]
user        = mysql
pid-file    = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
socket      = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
port        = 3306
basedir     = /usr
datadir     = /var/lib/mysql
tmpdir      = /tmp
language    = /usr/share/mysql/english
skip-external-locking

key_buffer      = 1048M
max_allowed_packet  = 16M
thread_stack = 2M
thread_cache_size   = 16384
sort_buffer_size    = 256K
read_buffer_size    = 2M
read_rnd_buffer_size    = 256K
tmp_table_size      = 512M
max_heap_table_size = 512M
query_cache_size    = 512M
thread_concurrency  = 16
set-variable = table_cache=16384
max_connections     = 500

wait_timeout = 3600

innodb_buffer_pool_size = 1024M
innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 8M
innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 50
innodb_flush_method=O_DIRECT
innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M
innodb_thread_concurrency = 8
innodb_file_per_table=1

query_cache_limit       = 1024M
query_cache_size        = 512M
query_cache_type = 1
server-id       = 9
log_bin         = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log
expire_logs_days    = 10
max_binlog_size         = 100M

expire_logs_days    = 3

skip-bdb

[mysqldump]
quick
quote-names
max_allowed_packet  = 16M

[mysql]
prompt                  = (\u@atlas) [\d]>\\_

[isamchk]
key_buffer      = 16M

!includedir /etc/mysql/conf.d/

EDIT I changed the my.cnf above - I've just realised it was the one from the old server! Also - this is 5.0, not 5.1

At work, our CEO is working on a plan to move away from a service provider who do our Spam filtering, etc.

Currently, all our mail gets relayed out through this service, and all incoming email gets relayed to us from this service.

Part of the reason this was setup was due to "Deliverability" - a big email service provider like the ones we use is unlikely to be Blacklisted (we had a problem before we moved to them where certain ISPs would block us for sending too many emails to their client (which are just order confirmation/dispatch emails!))

If we were to move away, our mailservers would be delivering directly. I'd like to set up some sort of monitoring system that gives us stats about how many mails we're sending out, what domains we're sending them to, bounce rates, servers that are regularly bouncing us, etc.

Does anyone know of a good solution for this?

Possible Duplicate:
What tool do you use to monitor your servers?

What apps do you use to monitor your servers, and what do they monitor?

I'm kind of impressed by some of last.fm's monitors

Without using SpamAssasin, or similar, what are your best tips for preventing spam.

Please try and provide config examples :D