How to set timeout for exclusive lock in PostgreSQL

I have an import script that was failing because of the 'Exclusive nowait' option I set my script. This caused the script to error out the first time it could not get the exclusive lock on the table. My script did it this w开发者_JS百科ay:

"LOCK TABLE %s IN EXCLUSIVE MODE NOWAIT"

Now my script works it's just that I want to be able to set the timeout for PostgreSQL instead of having it wait for the maximum time which is 15mins. I prefer to set it in posgresql.conf. Is there a way to do this?

This topic was under discussion in August 2010, and at seems the patch which provided exactly the optin you need (lock_timeout) is about to be rejected because it complicates the timeout framework in PG to much. So I assume you have to go with the usual statement_timeout here.