weird error messages on slave

[Thierry Delbushaye]

Hi,

i've set up a replication system (working ok), but i'm getting weird error messages in the slave log.

The messages look like these :

<cut>
050513 0:33:59 [ERROR] Error reading packet from server: Lost connection to MySQL server during query (server_errno=2013)
050513 0:33:59 [ERROR] Slave I/O thread: Failed reading log event, reconnecting to retry, log 'master-bin.001' position nnnnnnnn
050513 0:33:59 [Note] Slave: connected to master 'replicator@master:3306',replication resumed in log master-bin.001' at position nnnnnnnn
<cut>

This error messages happen almost every hour.

I tried to figure out what happened that closed the connection, and looked at the binlog file, and nnnnnnnn was the end of the file.

Why do i get error messages when slave is up to date.
The problem is that my relaylog doesnt empty itself. As most request are big ones, the logs increase very rapidly and rise over GBs after one week.


QUESTION :
1. Doesn't the relay log delete succeeding requests when they are done ?
2. Do i have to unset a connection timeout in order not to get those annoying 'error' messages ?

Thanks for help.

Thierry Delbushaye
DBiT s.a.