backups--a cautionary tale and two questions

[sethg at ropine.com (Seth Gordon)]

dsr at tao.merseine.nu wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 08:30:37PM -0500, Seth Gordon wrote:
> 
>>(1) The cron job does not unmount partitions before dumping them.  What
>>are the consequences of this?  (If the only consequence is "every once
>>in a while some process will be modifying a file on a partition while
>>it's being dumped, and that file will not be backed up or that dump will
>>be aborted", I can live with that.)
> 
> 
> Yes, unless you are running a database, in which case you are
> likely to never get a consistent dump of the DB. Halt or
> snapshot the DB and use the appropriate tool.

Does a Berkeley DB file (like the one underlying bogofilter) have to be 
protected in this way?