Problems with Outsourced Hosting

I'm working with client who has their site on a hosting company's servers. They do not want to change that for some reason. I am attempting to migrate them to Drupal. When I first tried to install Drupal, I found that MySQL LOCK TABLE command was not allowed. A quick Google search revealed that this company would allow LOCK TABLE if you asked nicely. I spent 4 hours on the phone and then waited a couple of days but managed to get LOCK TABLE access. I was able to install Drupal and start setting up a basic site.

Now I am running into a new problem, MySQL reports the following message: Too many connections. I have done some more research and once again found an intersection of this hosting company and this error. I tried changing the connect command to pconnect and that is helping but the problem persists. I have not found a way to read the MySQL max_connections setting.

Anyone else have an suggestions?

-Douglas