getting error message "too many connections"

Question

Getting an error message on public website regarding too many connections. We increased our SQL connections, but we don't have a lot of interaction going on between our website and CiviCRM. We have web hooks between our forms and CiviCRM. How do we troubleshoot what is causing this? Nothing in the logs. Any ideas for preventing this?

We are on WordPress 4.5.3 and CiviCRM 4.7.9.

Initialization Error

Array
(
    [callback] => Array
        (
            [0] => CRM_Core_Error
            [1] => simpleHandler
        )

    [code] => -24
    [message] => DB Error: connect failed
    [mode] => 16
    [debug_info] =>  [nativecode=Too many connections]
    [type] => DB_Error
    [user_info] =>  [nativecode=Too many connections]
    [to_string] => [db_error: message="DB Error: connect failed" code=-24 mode=callback callback=CRM_Core_Error::simpleHandler prefix="" info=" [nativecode=Too many connections]"]
)
Initialization Error

Array
(
    [callback] => Array
        (
            [0] => CRM_Core_Error
            [1] => simpleHandler
        )

    [code] => -24
    [message] => DB Error: connect failed
    [mode] => 16
    [debug_info] =>  [nativecode=Too many connections]
    [type] => DB_Error
    [user_info] =>  [nativecode=Too many connections]
    [to_string] => [db_error: message="DB Error: connect failed" code=-24 mode=callback callback=CRM_Core_Error::simpleHandler prefix="" info=" [nativecode=Too many connections]"]
)

Answer 1

Two thoughts:

1) any chance you have a very low limit by default in your hosting setup/config? Can you get into MySQL and figure out the value of this variable:

show variables like 'max_connections';

2) could you be under brute force attack - e.g. against the login form? Can you see any extra/unusual load on your server. If you can get to a shell you can type the following command:

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