Lou,
From the exception it appears queries are failing at your database
server. Maybe MySql 4.x isn't high enough. I run MySql 5 no problem.
I am running CentOS 4 and upgraded to MySQL 5.0.54 using the centosplus
repository. After this the problem was resolved with no other changes so
the issue appears to have been MySQL 4.1.
Thanks, Lou Parisi