MySQL – what does skip-locking in the.cnf do

MySQL

I'm using MySQL 5.0.67 on RHEL5 and basing my configuration on my-huge.cnf.

I can't find anything in the MySQL manual for the row 'skip-locking' which appears in the config file.

Should this be replaced with 'skip_external_locking' or should I just remove the row entirely as that is now a default.

MySQL Manual for skip-external-locking

Thanks.

Best Answer

see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/external-locking.html

quote:

If you run multiple servers that use the same database directory (not recommended), each server must have external locking enabled.

It really just has to do with the dangers presented by multiple processes accessing the same data. In many DBMS situations you want to lock the table/row before performing an operation, and unlocking afterwards. This is to prevent possible data corruption.

Edit: see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/news-4-0-3.html Quote

Renamed --skip-locking to --skip-external-locking.