How can I display these open transactions and commit or cancel them?
There is no open transaction, MySQL will rollback the transaction upon disconnect.
You cannot commit the transaction (IFAIK).
You display threads using
SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST
See: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/thread-information.html
It will not help you, because you cannot commit a transaction from a broken connection.
What happens when a connection breaks
From the MySQL docs: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-tips.html
4.5.1.6.3. Disabling mysql Auto-Reconnect
If the mysql client loses its connection to the server while sending a statement, it immediately and automatically tries to reconnect once to the server and send the statement again. However, even if mysql succeeds in reconnecting, your first connection has ended and all your previous session objects and settings are lost: temporary tables, the autocommit mode, and user-defined and session variables. Also, any current transaction rolls back.
This behavior may be dangerous for you, as in the following example where the server was shut down and restarted between the first and second statements without you knowing it:
Also see: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/auto-reconnect.html
How to diagnose and fix this
To check for auto-reconnection:
If an automatic reconnection does occur (for example, as a result of calling mysql_ping()), there is no explicit indication of it. To check for reconnection, call mysql_thread_id() to get the original connection identifier before calling mysql_ping(), then call mysql_thread_id() again to see whether the identifier has changed.
Make sure you keep your last query (transaction) in the client so that you can resubmit it if need be.
And disable auto-reconnect mode, because that is dangerous, implement your own reconnect instead, so that you know when a drop occurs and you can resubmit that query.
