Spinning/hung processes on 5.1.43, innodb 1.0.6

[Sam Johnson]

Having an issue where apparently the web server times out a request (not entirely sure if symptom or cause), and the procedure is left running on the db. Sometimes the procedure then seems to spin over the same few statements and never exit. Example below, this process will alternate between a function call and the delete statement. The Time will always be 0, so won't hit any of the db's timeouts.

-----------------------------------------------------
Id: 2854224
User: prod_db
Host: localhost:32835
db: primary
Command: Query
Time: 0
State: NULL
Info: SELECT f_adNatGetIDfromName( NAME_CONST('inFieldName',_utf8'realestate_lifestyle' COLLATE 'utf8_gene

then

Id: 2854224
User: prod_db
Host: localhost:32835
db: primary
Command: Query
Time: 0
State: updating
Info: DELETE FROM adCartAdNatures
WHERE adCartID = NAME_CONST('inCartID',309552)
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Right now I get about 10 of these processes stuck a day (not just the same procedure, but 2 or 3 different ones). They don't seem to be causing a lot of overhead, however they seem to be causing the flush tables command in my backup script to not return in a reasonable time.