MySQL max_connections Changed Without Notice

Question

I'm running a Linux (512MB of RAM) server with MySQL 5.1.

I host an app that is used by a small # of users (less than 50). Everything has been working fine until yesterday, connecting to my DB would fail if more than one user connected. I checked the log files and it showed there were too many connections.

So, I then checked my.cnf and I see the following:

[mysqld]
max_user_connections=1
max_connections=1

innodb_file_per_table
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql
# Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks
symbolic-links=0

[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

I haven't opened up my.cnf since I installed MySQL over 4 months ago.

1) Why in the world would max_user_connections and max_connections randomly get set to 1?

2) Next question is, what should I set those two values to?

3) Should I be worried that this random change will happen again?

* NOTE: I noticed this started after I changed some things in my SSH config file to allow for a more secure public/private key connection while using SFTP. Could that have really made a difference in the MySQL Config?

Thanks for any help you can provide!