system error: 32

[Aubrey Holland]

I'm running MySQL 5.6.13 on OSX 10.8. I have a database running where all of the tables are partitioned, for a total of 250 partitions each. In this setup, queries will work fine until either some time passes or I do something particularly intense, after which I start getting these errors:

ERROR 2013 (HY000): Lost connection to MySQL server at 'sending authentication information', system error: 32

Once the error occurs, all queries will result in the same thing. I believe this is related to the partitioning, as I have seen the problem go away when the partitioning isn't used or when the partition count is reduced. Unfortunately, I need to have these partitions in order to match our production environment.

MySQL was installed via HomeBrew, though the problem also occurs if I install it from the binaries directly. my.cnf looks like this:

[mysqld]
general_log=0
log_error = /var/log/mysql/error.log
general_log=false
general_log_file=/var/log/mysql/general.log

And nothing appears in the logs when the problem occurs. Any ideas would be very much appreciated!