I changed the my.cnf file to include the max_allowed_packet setting as shown below, and even after rebooting the entire system nothing changed. Note: I had to do the "set-variable = " thing becasue otherwise ubbthreads could not connect with the database. Any other thoughts on things to try?
[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
set-variable = max_allowed_packet=100M
[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib
[safe_mysqld]
err-log=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
