SybaseBlog

Normally deadlock information is written to the Sybase error log.

However, that may not include enough information for your analysis. You can enable more information to be written to the error log using the "print deadlock information" parameter.

1> sp_configure "print deadlock information" 1
2> go

This parameter should be disabled after the detailed information has been collected because this setting degrades Sybase ASE performance.

Please check the Sybase manual for more information on this parameter, and deadlocks in general.

http://manuals.sybase.com/onlinebooks/group-as/asg1250e/ptallbk/@Generic__BookTextView/17268

On older versions of Sybase ASE you would get this deadlock information by using certain Trace Flags. Look at 1204 and 3605.

Actually handling deadlocks is a topic for another day. For a potentially quick fix, consider increasing the number of locks.

Or, reduce the locking on index pages by altering affected tables from allpages lock to datapage lock. This rebuilds all the indexes, so it may take awhile.

1> alter table [name] lock [locktype]
2> go

I will leave you with the two best links I have on deadlocks:

Peter Sap's Sybase ASE tip: Investigation of deadlocks reported in the errorlog
http://www.petersap.nl/documents/deadlock.html

Todd Boss's technical notes on deadlocks (Edited)
http://www.bossconsulting.com/sybase_dba/sublevels/
deadlock.info