Forum DB error in vBulletin 4.x. Design flaw?
 

It seems I am not the only one having these errors (with some variations):

MySQL Error : MySQL server has gone away
Error Number : 2006
Request Date : Friday, February 19th 2010 @ 04:11:42 PM
Error Date : Friday, February 19th 2010 @ 04:12:31 PM
Script : http://MY_SITE.com/cron.php?rand=1266617501
Referrer : http://MY_SITE.com/content/1-the-front-page
IP Address : 209.26.19.241
Username : Unregistered
Classname : vB_Database

Now - IP address: 209.26.19.241 - is IP of some random user who came to my site. Judging by that - my guess is that sitemap management/creation script is running on behalf of casual users.
Which means that one out of NNN users (unlucky one) will experience slower page load because server decided to build sitemap on behalf of his connection when he came on site.
If user is (justifiably) impatient - he closes or reloads page in browser - and it kills TCP connection, screws cron job process, resets DB connection, possibly leaves DB tables in progressively inconsistent state and generates above or similar errors.
The cause of that is not web server timeout setting as some are trying to suggest.
The cause of these errors is the way this functionality is implemented - as "poor man" cron job.

If that is True - my question is - do we have a way on how to run ALL these housekeeping tasks through cron job?
Dooing that through independent and scheduled cron job would solve all this nonsense.

Gleb