Replication suddenly stops

Any ideas why this is occurring:

070722 20:31:40 [ERROR] While trying to obtain the list of slaves from the master 'IP:PORT', user 'X' got the following error: '' 070722 20:31:40 [Note] Slave I/O thread exiting, read up to log HOST-bin.000029', position 196143095

On other days it's occurred at 20:35, 20:36, etc.

The error is not particularly useful! Our backups do not run during this time-frame (which were my first suspicion as we stop / start the slave). Nor do I know why it is obtaining a list of slaves from the master.

Master vers: 5.0.26
Slave vers: 5.0.26 (before yesterday); now 5.0.45 (problem still occurs). Both running on Linux 2.6 and compiled from source.

Any advice appreciated.

Robert. Received on Tue Jul 24 05:16:57 2007