InnoDB Recovery Behavior - Long delay after MySQL accepting connections

[Jason Riffel]

I hope someone can help me understand the behavior of InnoDB recovery better. I am running MySQL 5.1.22rc (win32) and have an error condition where MySQL mysteriously terminates (Not sure why this is happening either). When MySQL restarts, it very rapidly gets past the InnoDB recovery (according to the error log, and --console in debugging about 20 seconds) and will state it is accepting connections. However, when I try and connect with the client utility it hangs doing nothing for some times as long as 5 minutes and then will eventually let me into the client.

I am assuming that even though there are no log messages being generated, and even though MySQL says it is recovered and accepting connections that there must be some recovery still operating in the background blocking mysqld from truely responding to client requests. Is this the case? Can anyone provide me some pointers for seeing exactly what it is doing? I want to validate it is in fact doing a recovery and not a bug since it claims to be recovered. Technically I can't even connect to show status, etc. even tho it says it is recovered, happy, and accepting connections in all of 20 seconds.

Thanks in advance!