Was getting this error on our puppetmaster that only had a few clients.
Turns out it's just an error from mysql being passed down the line. We share our mysql for puppet with multiple servers. Restarting mysql saved the day...
Read
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/too-many-connections.html for instructions on increasing the limit...
mysql> show variables like 'max_connections';
+-----------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-----------------+-------+
| max_connections | 100 |
+-----------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>
increasing the limit in /etc/my.cnf
[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
...
max_connections=200
mysql> show variables like 'max_connections';
+-----------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-----------------+-------+
| max_connections | 200 |
+-----------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>
