How to handle Broken pipe error with Spring, (JPA) Hibernate, MySQL

Question

I have an web application using Spring JPA (Hibernate) and MySQL running in Tomcat. After period of inactivity I always get this exception:

Caused by: javax.persistence.PersistenceException: org.hibernate.TransactionException: JDBC begin transaction failed: 
        at org.hibernate.jpa.spi.AbstractEntityManagerImpl.convert(AbstractEntityManagerImpl.java:1763) ~[hibernate-entitymanager-4.3.5.Final.jar:4.3.5.Final]
        at org.hibernate.jpa.spi.AbstractEntityManagerImpl.convert(AbstractEntityManagerImpl.java:1677) ~[hibernate-entitymanager-4.3.5.Final.jar:4.3.5.Final]
        at org.hibernate.jpa.spi.AbstractEntityManagerImpl.throwPersistenceException(AbstractEntityManagerImpl.java:1771) ~[hibernate-entitymanager-4.3.5.Final.jar:4.3.5.Final]
        at org.hibernate.jpa.internal.TransactionImpl.begin(TransactionImpl.java:64) ~[hibernate-entitymanager-4.3.5.Final.jar:4.3.5.Final]
        at org.springframework.orm.jpa.DefaultJpaDialect.beginTransaction(DefaultJpaDialect.java:67) ~[spring-orm-4.0.3.RELEASE.jar:4.0.3.RELEASE]
        at org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager.doBegin(JpaTransactionManager.java:380) ~[spring-orm-4.0.3.RELEASE.jar:4.0.3.RELEASE]
        ... 38 common frames omitted
Caused by: org.hibernate.TransactionException: JDBC begin transaction failed: 
        at org.hibernate.engine.transaction.internal.jdbc.JdbcTransaction.doBegin(JdbcTransaction.java:76) ~[hibernate-core-4.3.5.Final.jar:4.3.5.Final]
        at org.hibernate.engine.transaction.spi.AbstractTransactionImpl.begin(AbstractTransactionImpl.java:162) ~[hibernate-core-4.3.5.Final.jar:4.3.5.Final]
        at org.hibernate.internal.SessionImpl.beginTransaction(SessionImpl.java:1435) ~[hibernate-core-4.3.5.Final.jar:4.3.5.Final]
        at org.hibernate.jpa.internal.TransactionImpl.begin(TransactionImpl.java:61) ~[hibernate-entitymanager-4.3.5.Final.jar:4.3.5.Final]
        ... 40 common frames omitted
Caused by: com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException: The last packet successfully received from the server was 48,764,262 milliseconds ago.  The last packet sent successfully to the server wa
s 48,764,262 milliseconds ago. is longer than the server configured value of 'wait_timeout'. You should consider either expiring and/or testing connection validity before use in your application, increasing
 the server configured values for client timeouts, or using the Connector/J connection property 'autoReconnect=true' to avoid this problem.
        at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method) ~[na:1.7.0_55]
        at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:57) ~[na:1.7.0_55]
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45) ~[na:1.7.0_55]
        at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:526) ~[na:1.7.0_55]
        at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:409) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.30.jar:na]
        at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createCommunicationsException(SQLError.java:1127) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.30.jar:na]
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.send(MysqlIO.java:3983) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.30.jar:na]
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sendCommand(MysqlIO.java:2596) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.30.jar:na]
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sqlQueryDirect(MysqlIO.java:2776) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.30.jar:na]
        at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.execSQL(ConnectionImpl.java:2832) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.30.jar:na]
        at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.setAutoCommit(ConnectionImpl.java:5357) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.30.jar:na]
        at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.DelegatingConnection.setAutoCommit(DelegatingConnection.java:373) ~[commons-dbcp-eap6.jar:na]
        at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.PoolingDataSource$PoolGuardConnectionWrapper.setAutoCommit(PoolingDataSource.java:330) ~[commons-dbcp-eap6.jar:na]
        at org.hibernate.engine.transaction.internal.jdbc.JdbcTransaction.doBegin(JdbcTransaction.java:72) ~[hibernate-core-4.3.5.Final.jar:4.3.5.Final]
        ... 43 common frames omitted
Caused by: java.net.SocketException: Broken pipe
        at java.net.SocketOutputStream.socketWrite0(Native Method) ~[na:1.7.0_55]
        at java.net.SocketOutputStream.socketWrite(SocketOutputStream.java:113) ~[na:1.7.0_55]
        at java.net.SocketOutputStream.write(SocketOutputStream.java:159) ~[na:1.7.0_55]
        at java.io.BufferedOutputStream.flushBuffer(BufferedOutputStream.java:82) ~[na:1.7.0_55]
        at java.io.BufferedOutputStream.flush(BufferedOutputStream.java:140) ~[na:1.7.0_55]
        at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.send(MysqlIO.java:3964) ~[mysql-connector-java-5.1.30.jar:na]
        ... 50 common frames omitted

Now, I do understand this has to do with MySQL closing the connection after 8 hours and Hibernate trying to use this connection and that my connection pool might not be configured properly or configured at all but I do not know how to do it.

I even added autoReconnect=true to mysql url connection configuration but it did not help.

This is what is in server.xml of the Tomcat configuration.

    <Resource name="jdbc/mysqldb" auth="Container"
      type="javax.sql.DataSource"
    ...  
url="jdbc:mysql://${env.OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_HOST}:${env.OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_PORT}/${env.OPENSHIFT_APP_NAME}?autoReconnect=true"/>

What and where should be configured to get this working?

Answer 1

Try doing something like this in hibernate configuration:

<property name="connection.autoReconnect"> true </ property>
<property name="connection.autoReconnectForPools"> true </ property>
<property name="connection.is-connection-validation-required"> true </ property>

Answer 2

Try adding testOnBorrow="true" and validationQuery="SELECT 1" validationInterval="60000" This happens when DB server terminates connections. After adding these parameters, the connection pool will validate the connection before giving it to the application. If it is not valid, the connection will be discarded and a new one will be created.