Video: Building a MySQL Slave and Keeping it in Sync At the Boston MySQL User Group Sheeri Cabral presented on how to get a consistent snapshot to build a slave, how to use mk-table-checksum to check for differences between masters and slaves on an ongoing basis, and how to use tools such as mk-table-sync and mysqldump to sync the data if there are any discrepancies. This link contains the slides and the videos

If you work with databases long enough, you run into a certain problem. You have a mysqldump file* of a table or a database, and you need to import it into your new database. However, you need to change something in the file first. Maybe the "INSERT" statements need to be changed to "INSERT REPLACE". You fire up "vi "and load the file, but when you go to search and replace, "vi" runs out of memory and doesn't complete the operation. Or maybe the dump file is just so big it won't even load in the first place. What do you do in this situation?Well, one simple solution is to use the "sed" tool to modify the file. Sed actually stands for "stream editor". The "vi "editor would be considered a static editor in that it loads all of the file into memory at once. If you run out of memory, you are out of luck. With  []

There are several ways to backup MySQL, since online backup hasn't made its way into production releases yet, so this is good roundup of what is available now.