while using Google App Engine, i had this problem. For some reason i did following since then Google App Engine was never starting.
$ echo '' > /tmp/appengine.apprtc.root/*.db
To fix it i required to do manually:
$ sqlite3 datastore.db
sqlite> begin immediate;
<press CTRL+Z>
$ cp datastore.db logs.db
And then run the Google App Engine with flag:
$ dev_appserver.py --clear_datastore --clear_search_index
after that it finally worked.