General error: 2006 MySQL server has gone away

Hi,

We have two servers, one for web and another for percona.

From time to time we get “General error: 2006 MySQL server has gone away”. It happens randomly.

Percona server load is very low and has a high max-connection setting.

w 04:35:31 up 161 days, 7:42, 1 user, load average: 0,05, 0,07, 0,05

Lots of free RAM also

free -m total used free shared buffers cachedMem: 96811 84736 12075 0 1193 22186-/+ buffers/cache: 61357 35454Swap: 2047 0 2047

Also, Percona is never restarted. It has been up for months.

My question is: what might be causing these issues? Is it possible to force Percona do log the reason why this problem happens?

Would it be possible to use a network sniffer like tcpdump with the frequency it occurs?