Comment 54 for bug 105457

I have this problem in 64-bit desktop karmic running mysql 5.1.37-1ubuntu5.

As part of my daily maintenance chores, I
   'sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop'
the server, copy the database directory to my backup drive and
   'sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start'
the server afterwards.

Frequently, and I do not know when or why, the mysqld_safe process is not stopped by the above command.

The start command launches its own instance of the mysqld_safe process. And bingo, we've got to competing mysqld_safe processes and the load of one of the cpu's goes to 100%.

As a temporary solution, I will issue a
   'sudo killall mysqld_safe'
immediately after the stop command.

However this should not be needed, and I feel that this problem is really a showstopper, far from unimportant!