mysql service restart

[Zbigniew Szalbot]

Hello all,

I have a question. I am using mysql (Ver 14.12 Distrib 5.1.11-beta, for
portbld-freebsd6.1 (i386) using  5.0) on a FBSD 6.2-RELEASE box. Today it
got a bit of work to do and as a result the load was between 8-10 at peak
times. I connect to mysql through socket. Mysql is mostly needed for exim
where it serves to check authentication when people relay mail through it.
When the load grew higher mysql service died (I saw this in paniclog):

MYSQL connection failed: Can't connect to local MySQL server through
socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)

Now, I did not restart the service but it was automatically restarted
(great but how come?!). However, my question is why would mysql die like
that? Is that likely to happen? I took some measures to make sure the load
does not grow too high but would appreciate your comments. Thank you!


-- 
Zbigniew Szalbot