From: "Greg Rundlett (freephile)"
<greg(a)freephile.com>
Go ahead and stop Apache, and if you haven't already, make a disk copy of
your mysql data directory for backups.
Minor point, but I don’t know how much the OP knows about MySQL: be sure to stop mysql,
too! Otherwise, a disk copy of the database may not be in a recoverable state.
The BEST thing is to use mysqldump to make a “source code” dump of your database.
:::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality Co-op ::::