Error while sending STMT_PREPARE packet

[CheersnGears]

I encountered this error during an upgrade of 3.4.9 -> 4.1.12.1

It is NOT an IPS error.  This is a potential issue with MariaDB (the drop in replacement for MySQL)

In order to overcome this error, you will need to be able to modify your my.conf

The default wait_timeout and interactive_timeout is 30 seconds.  In order to get around this error, I increased mine to 60 seconds.

Restart mysql after adjusting your my.conf and click retry on the IPS upgrader, you should be able to continue.