When a MySQL client or the mysqld server receives a packet bigger than max_allowed_packet bytes, it issues a Packet too large error and closes the connection. With some clients, you may also get a Lost connection to MySQL server during query error if the communication packet is too large.
Both the client and the server have their own max_allowed_packet variable , so if you want to handle big packets, you must increase this variable both in the client and in the server.
If you are using the mysql client program, its default max_allowed_packet variable is 16MB. That is also the maximum value before MySQL 4.0. To set a larger value from 4.0 on, start mysql like this:
mysql> mysql --max_allowed_packet=32M
That sets the packet size to 32MB.
The server's default max_allowed_packet value is 1MB. You can increase this if the server needs to handle big queries (for example, if you are working with big BLOB columns). For example, to set the variable to 16MB, start the server like this:
mysql> mysqld --max_allowed_packet=16M