If you start the server with the --log-warnings option, you might find messages like this in your error log:

Aborted connection 854 to db: 'employees' user: 'josh'

or:

ERROR 1184 (08S01): Aborted connection 17 to db: 'unconnected' user: 'zabbix' host: 'localhost' (init_connect command failed)

If a client is unable even to connect, the server increments the