Measuring your table locks

I was reviewing Gerhard's analysis of the load on the Drupal.org database server on the infrastructure list. I was intrigued by his measurements of database table locks, a common problem with Drupal and MyISAM table locks.

"I was doing /usr/bin/mysqladmin --verbose processlist | grep "Locked" >>/home/killes/locked.txt from cron and then looked into that file."

You can also get the same result by doing a show full processlist at the mysql prompt. I thought this might be useful for some of you that are tuning your databases.

Kieran