Re: Diff between restore from tar and recover from power outage

[mos]

At 09:59 PM 6/4/2007, you wrote:
>    If mysql has been shut down, and given enough time for the tables to
>be flushed to disk, then backing up the data dir using tar is fine. You
>can tar the data dir without shutting down, providing all transactions
>have been stopped and the tables have been flushed to disk. This is how
>we backup our servers, and we haven't had an issue yet (restoring daily
>to a testing environment).

Scott,

What if you stop the transactions and updates to the tables, and flush the 
cache to disk, BUT leave the tables open for reading? Can you then do a 
backup of the files during when only Select statements are used on them? 
Then when the backup is over, re-allow updates to the tables? I'm thinking 
of doing this for a webserver so I don't have to shut it down for reading, 
but just for updates for a few minutes while the backup is underway.

TIA
Mike