mysqli_connect fails through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock'

[liderbug]

I just recently upgraded to 1.5.3 and now I'm getting a lot of these logs. 90% of the time everything seems to work then "Sorry the site is down for Maint.".

[09-Dec-2014 07:55:03 America/New_York] PHP Warning: mysqli_connect(): (HY000/2002): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2) in includes/classes/db/mysql/query_factory.php on line 62

60 while (!isset($this->link) || ($this->link == FALSE && $connectionRetry !=0) )
61 {
62 $this->link = mysqli_connect($zf_host, $zf_user, $zf_password);
63 $connectionRetry--;
64 }

Thoughts.
Thanks