How to exclusive lock mysql database?

Question

I have multiple mysql databases and I want to perform some administration tasks on a particular database. How do I ensure that no one else can connect to that database while

Answer 1

If you can afford stopping the server for the time of maintenance, stop the daemon and reconfigure it to not listen to network connections. Only allow connections through a local UNIX socket.

Then logon locally on the same machine, either physically or via SSH. As long as nobody else has access to the machine, this will ensure you are alone. When done, restore the original configuration file and restart the daemon.

A different approach would be to temporarily disable all user accounts but "root" (or whatever you use to do your maintenance) for the particular database. This has the drawback however of actually messing with account data which is a little more risky than just preventing network connections.