title: dynamically change mysqli connection timeout in PHP
body: <p>how can I dynamically change MySqli connection timeout using PHP? I found the following manual that you can set an option after a connection is opened, but it says it only support Windows since PHP 5.3.1:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.php.net/manual/en/mysqli.options.php" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.php.net/manual/en/mysqli.options.php</a></p>
  
  <p>I'm using PHP5.2.4, MySQLi (improved version)</p>
  
  <p>the default connection timeout is 20 seconds in my.cnf, but in a special php script I have I'd like to set it to higher like 500 seconds before it times out.</p>