Comment 12 for bug 620441

Ultimately, I believe what Johan stated previously is correct. If your mysql daemon is not stopping when you tell it to shutdown, then you should be concerned.

I've pushed a branch up now that raises kill timeout to 300 seconds.

5 minutes should be long enough for most databases to finish flushing. Any longer and the system reboot/halt will be delayed unacceptably. I'm thinking about what happens when a UPS dies and the sysadmin tries to shut down the server. kill -9 is still less violent than a total system power off!.

I'm also starting a discussion with our documentation team about recommending InnoDB as the safer table type, and I've opened a new bug report to suggest that InnoDB be the default table_type:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-5.1/+bug/633364