Hibernate c3p0 connection pool not timing out idle connections

We have a java server connecting to a MySQL 5 database usingHibernate as our persistence layer which is using c3p0 for DB connection pooling.

I've tried following the c3p0 and hibernate documentation:

• Hibernate – HowTo Configure c3p0 connection pool
• C3P0 Hibernate properties
  • C3P0.properties configuration

We're getting an error on our production servers stating that:

… Caused by:
com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLNonTransientConnectionException:
No operations allowed after connection
closed.Connection was implicitly
closed due to underlying
exception/error:

BEGIN NESTED EXCEPTION

com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException

MESSAGE: The last packet successfully
received from the server was45000
seconds ago.The last packet sent
successfully to the server was 45000
seconds ago, which is longer than the
server configured value of
'wait_timeout'. You should consider
either expiring and/or testing
connection validity before use in your
application, increasing the server
configured values for client timeouts,
or using the Connector/J connection
property 'autoReconnect=true' to avoid
this problem.

STACKTRACE:

com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException:
The last packet successfully received
from the server was45000 seconds
ago.The last packet sent successfully
to the server was 45000 seconds ago,
which is longer than the server
configured value of 'wait_timeout'.
You should consider either expiring
and/or testing connection validity
before use in your application,
increasing the server configured
values for client timeouts, or using
the Connector/J connection property
'autoReconnect=true' to avoid this
problem.

We have our c3p0 connection pool properties setup as follows:

hibernate.c3p0.max_size=10
hibernate.c3p0.min_size=1
hibernate.c3p0.timeout=5000
hibernate.c3p0.idle_test_period=300
hibernate.c3p0.max_statements=100
hibernate.c3p0.acquire_increment=2

The default MySQL wait_timetout is set to 28800 seconds (8 hours), the reported error is saying that it's been over 45000 seconds (about 12.5 hours). Although the c3p0 configuration states that it will "timeout" idle connections that haven't been used after 5000 seconds and it will check every 300 seconds, thus an idle connection should never live longer than 5299 seconds right?

I've tested locally by setting my developer MySQL (my.ini on windows, my.cnf on Unix) wait_timeout=60 and lowering the c3p0 idle timeout values below 60 seconds, and it will properly timeout idle connections and create new ones. I also check to ensure that we're not leaking DB connections and holding onto a connection, and it doesn't appear we are.

Here's the c3p0.properties file I'm using to test in my developer environment to ensure c3p0 is properly handling connections.

hibernate.properties (testing with MySQL wait_timeout=60)

hibernate.c3p0.max_size=10
hibernate.c3p0.min_size=1
hibernate.c3p0.timeout=20
hibernate.c3p0.max_statements=100
hibernate.c3p0.idle_test_period=5
hibernate.c3p0.acquire_increment=2

c3p0.properties

com.mchange.v2.log.FallbackMLog.DEFAULT_CUTOFF_LEVEL=ALL
com.mchange.v2.log.MLog=com.mchange.v2.log.FallbackMLog
c3p0.debugUnreturnedConnectionStackTraces=true
c3p0.unreturnedConnectionTimeout=10