perl fork( ) doubt

[lilly07]

I tried a small example in perl forking.
I opena connection with sql database in the parent or main program as follws:

$dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:database=$database;host=$host", $user, $pass) || die "\nDB connection error!\n";

And I try to execute some mql commands and it works fine.

As one of the process will take more time to finish, I open a fork as follows. And I try to do some sql commands inside the child process as below:

 $pid = fork();
if( $pid == 0 ){
$sth = $dbh->prepare("update $table SET STATUS=0 where CONFIGID=$id");
 $sth->execute(); 
}

But I get an error message as below:

DBD::mysql::st execute failed: MySQL server has gone away at test.pl line 172.

Do I have to open the database connection again inside the child process? I also tried using

$dbh->{'mysql_auto_reconnect'} = 1;

but I get the same error. Please let me know.

Thanks and Regards