On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 11:24 AM, Roan Kattouw roan.kattouw@home.nl wrote:
The error seems pretty straightforward to me: the software is trying to get a lock on the user table and has to wait too long for that. Unless this is some kind of new structural problem at Wikimedia, you just have to retry your request and hope for the best.
However, this message can be symptomatic of some other problem if it occurs too frequently. It could indicate that something is slowing down queries such that they take too long (and hold locks too long). It could also mean that the API is running queries that are unnecessarily prone to locking. Or maybe misusing transactions somehow or something, I don't know.
Wait a minute, though, is the API running an update on the user table every time someone logs in? If so, why? Especially UPDATE user SET user_name . . . why should anything other than Special:RenameUser be touching user_name *ever*?