[Rails] Database Auto-reconnect

[Brian Terlson]

Hello all,

I have a Rails application that uses a mySQL database.  It runs on the 
intranet here, and frequently doesn't get accessed for a span of 8 hours 
or more (especially since I'm its sole developer and its not even done 
yet).  I often run into the following problem: After a period of 
inactivity, I try to access any page that references an active record 
model, and it errors out.  The error message is "Invalid argument: #{any 
SQL statement you want here}".

I asked about this on IRC, and thanks to some very helpful folks, the 
problem has been narrowed down to the SQL connection timing out after 8 
hours and disconnecting, and Rails not re-connecting.  This coincides 
with the mySQL logs - when the error is thrown above, there is no 
activity in the database logs.

Is there a way I can tell Rails to reconnect to the database if the 
connection is dropped?  This seems like it can't be only a problem I've 
run in to...  Everyone isn't constantly restarting apache when 
developing a site on their own box are they?  ;)

Thanks for any help you guys can provide!

-Brian Terlson