I'm trying to customize my C3P0 settings to avoid the error shown at the bottom of this post. It was suggested at this url --- http://make-it-open.blogspot.com/2008/12/sql-error-0-sqlstate-08s01.html --- to adjust the settings as follows: In hibernate.cfg.xml, write <property name="c3p0.min_size">5</property> <property name="c3p0.max_size">20</property> <property name="c3p0.timeout">1800</property> <property name="c3p0.max_statements">50</property> Then create "c3p0.properties" in your root classpath folder and write c3p0.testConnectionOnCheckout=true c3p0.acquireRetryDelay=1000 c3p0.acquireRetryAttempts=1 I've tried to make those adjustments following the direction of the Play! Framework documentation, where they say use "db.pool..." as follows: db.pool.timeout=1800 db.pool.maxSize=15 db.pool.minSize=5 db.pool.initialSize=5 db.pool.acquireRetryAttempts=1 db.pool.preferredTestQuery=SELECT 1 db.pool.testConnectionOnCheckout=true db.pool.acquireRetryDelay=1000 db.pool.maxStatements=50 Are those settings not going to work? Should I be trying to set them in a different way? With those settings I still get the error shown below, that is due to to long of a idle time. Complete Stack Trace of Error: 23:00:44,932 WARN ~ SQL Error: 0, SQLState: 08S01 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: 23:00:44,932 ERROR ~ Communications link failure 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: The last packet successfully received from the server was 274,847 milliseconds ago. The last packet sent successfully to the server was 7 milliseconds ago. 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: 23:00:44,934 ERROR ~ Why the driver complains here? 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLNonTransientConnectionException: No operations allowed after connection closed.Connection was implicitly closed by the driver. 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:407) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.getInstance(Util.java:382) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:1013) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:987) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:982) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:927) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.throwConnectionClosedException(ConnectionImpl.java:1213) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.getMutex(ConnectionImpl.java:3101) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.setAutoCommit(ConnectionImpl.java:4975) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at org.hibernate.jdbc.BorrowedConnectionProxy.invoke(BorrowedConnectionProxy.java:74) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at $Proxy49.setAutoCommit(Unknown Source) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at play.db.jpa.JPAPlugin.closeTx(JPAPlugin.java:368) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at play.db.jpa.JPAPlugin.onInvocationException(JPAPlugin.java:328) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at play.plugins.PluginCollection.onInvocationException(PluginCollection.java:447) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at play.Invoker$Invocation.onException(Invoker.java:240) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at play.jobs.Job.onException(Job.java:124) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at play.jobs.Job.call(Job.java:163) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at play.jobs.Job$1.call(Job.java:66) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$101(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:165) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:266) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:636) 2012-04-13T23:00:44+00:00 app[web.1]: Caused by: com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException: Communications link failure