MySQL server has gone away, happens on login, then its fine

[ericTM313]

Hello all,
Upon logging in (every user, with any type of permissions/settings), I get the following error:
Unable to retrieve system settings Query Failed:SELECT category, name, value FROM config::MySQL error 2006: MySQL server has gone away

After this error appears, I can hit the back button and everything works completely fine, no errors whatsoever.

So this shouldn't be a big deal really, but the boss is complaining

Ive googled and searched here, only solution I've come up with is the mysql packet size, which is currently set to 16mb. I can run the above query in phpmyadmin with no problems.

I am on shared hosting, linux (not sure what distro, but i believe centos), php 4.3.11, mysql 5.0.18, sugar version 4.5.1f open source

Any help is appreciated. thanks!

-Eric

[sacramentojoe]

max_allowed_packet is a server option which needs to be set in the
[mysqld] section of /etc/my.cnf, not specified to the 'mysql' client
on the command line like you're trying. But generally you're going
in the right direction - the "MySQL server has gone away" error is
caused by a query longer than the max_allowed_packet.