Backups

[Blaine Grady]

I'm running Redhat 5.2 with Linux 2.0.36.  I am running MySQL 3.22.21. 
By default when I installed MySQL with the RPMs, mysqld is started with
--skip-locking.  Every night I want BRU to backup all the files on my drive. 
With skip-locking, can I be guaranteed I can backup the raw database
files and not have any problems with MySQL server or corrupt files, given that
no changes are being written to the file?  Is this correct?  So I can
keep mysqld running throughout the backup procedure, even if users are
reading from, but not writing to, the database?  The same for running isamchk? 
If not, I have to stop mysqld temporarily, make the backup, restart
mysqld, right?  What would happen if I started mysqld with no --skip-locking? 
Then I can copy the files with no problem.  Why do Linux machines need
this?  Thanks for any assistance.


Blaine Grady
Webmaster/Database Developer
Kragie Newell Integrated Marketing