WordPress MU

I'm being told by my web host that my backups are failing because this option is not turned on (--skip-lock-tables). if a manual database backup is performed with that option it completes fine. what tables am i going to be missing though if i do this? will this be bad when i go to restore if we have a crash?

What way are automatic backups being generated?

Also for further reading:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysqldump.html#option_mysqldump_lock-tables

-skip-lock-tables means it will *skip* locking the tables when it makes a backup. Doesn't mean it skips tables.

ah, that makes me feel a little better. running the automatic backups through plesk, so i assume just mysqldump.

Andrea, what are your thoughts on these type of plugins?

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/other_notes/

it seems to work on 2.7 trunk. you ever used any of these?

haven't myself, heard they do work in MU.

I'd want to test it a lot to make sure users couldn't get full db copies though.

but if there's stuff server-side to do it, I'd use that and get my server guy / code monkey / DIY hubby to whip me up a cron job to make a backup and send it off the server somewhere.

That's what I'd do. :D

ended up doing a bunch of stuff, but it's backing up 100% now.

edited my.cnf (/etc/my.cnf) file and added this:
[mysqldump]
skip-opt
quick
single-transaction
skip-add-locks
extended-insert

restarted mysql service, converted all tables to ENGINE=InnoDB

easiest way to do that was export the entire DB and do a find/replace on the engine type of MyISAM to InnoDB and re-import.

hopefully this can help someone else in the future.

Well done, b. :)